B    3    132    flflZ 


Cassiral  ©Hitters. 

Edited  by  John  Jiic/iard  Green. 


MILTON 


BY 

STOPFORD   A.    BROOKE. 


NEW    YORK: 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

1903. 


o  mighty-mouth  d  inventor  of  harmonies, 
o  skill'd  to  sing  of  time  or  eternity, 
god-gifted  organ-voice  of  england, 

milton,  a  name  to  resound  for  agf3  : 
whose  titan  angels,  gabriel,  abdiel, 
starr'd  from  jehovah's  gorgeous  armouries, 
tower,  as  the  deep-domed  empyrean 

kings  to  the  roar  of  an  angel  onset — 
me  rather  all  that  bowery  loneliness, 
the  brooks  of  eden  mazily  murmuring, 
and  bloom  profuse  and  cedar  arches 
charm,  as  a  wanderer  out  in  ocean, 
where  some  refulgent  sunset  of  india 
streams  o'er  a  rich  ambrosial  ocean  isle, 
and  crimson-hufd  the  stately  pai.mwoods 
whisper  in  odorous  heights  of  even." 

Tennyson. 


MILTON. 

CHAPTER   I. 

THE   EARLY   LIFE  OF   MILTON. 

Birth  of  Milton. — Bread  Street,  in  the  City  of 
London,  as  one  turns  out  of  Cheapside,  was  famous 
in  Queen  Elizabeth's  days  for  its  Mermaid  Tavern, 
where  Shakspere,  Beaumont,  and  their  fellows  met 
to  drink  canary  wine,  and  to  put  "  each  their  whole  wit 
into  a  jest."  Not  far  from  its  doors,  though  on  the 
other  side  of  the  way,  at  the  sign  of  the  Spread  Eagle 
— the  device  of  the  Milton  family — John  Milton,  the 
poet,  was  born,  on  Friday,  December  9,  1608,  some 
eight  years  before  Shakspere's  death.  He  was  baptized 
in  All  Hallows  Church,  in  the  same  street,  December 
20th ;  and  his  name  still  stands  on  the  register  which 
was  saved  when  the  church  itself  was  destroyed  in  the 
Great  Fire.  The  boy  lived  in  his  father's  house  for 
sixteen  years,  and  may  often  have  seen  the  figures  of 
the  great  poets  after  their  carousing,  go  gaily  down 
the  street,  and  "  tasted  the  air  they  left  behind  them." 
It  pleases  our  fancy  to  think  that  the  shadow  of  Shaks- 
pere may  have  fallen  on  Milton's  eager  face  and  the 
Master  of  English  Drama  touched  the  Master  of 
English  Epic. 

His  Parentage. — Richard  Milton,  the  poet's 
grandfather,  was  one  of  a  Roman  Catholic  family 
in  the  rank  of  yeomen,  whom  we  can  trace  occupy- 
ing land  near  Oxford  as  far  back  as  1550.  He  clung 
to  his  religion  and  was  fined,  as  we  know  from  the 
Recusant  Rolls  for  Oxfordshire,  for  refusing  to  at- 
tend his  parish  church.  But  his  son,  John  Milton,  the 
poet's  father,  left  the  faith  of  his  ancestors,  and  became 


2  MILTON.  [chap. 

a  Protestant.     Exiled  from  his  home,  he  took  refuge 
in    London,   where   he    set   up   as  a  scrivener,   in   a 
business  which  united  a  great  part  of  the  work  done 
now  by  attorneys  and  law-stationers.     About  1600  he 
married  Sara,  whose  maiden  name  is  variously  given 
as  Bradshaw,  Haughton,  or  Caston,  a  woman  of  ex- 
cellent charity,  and  had  six   children,  of  whom  three 
died  in  childhood.     Of  the  other  three  the  eldest  was 
Anne,    afterwards  Mrs.    Phillips,    and    by   a   second 
marriage  Mrs.  Agar :  the  second   was  the  poet :   and 
the  third,  Christopher  Milton,  born  in  16 15,  became 
a  judge  and  was  knighted.     The  father  must  have 
prospered,  for  he  sent  his  two  sons    to  Cambridge, 
and  he  retired  in  1632  to  Horton,  near  Windsor.    His 
grave  Puritanism  was  of  that  earlier  type  which  still 
loved  the  arts,  and  wished  more  for  the  reformation 
of  the  Church  than  its  overthrow.     He  destined  his 
son  for  the  Church,  he  employed  Cornelius  Jansen  to 
make  a  portrait  of  the  boy  at  ten  years  old,  and  he  was 
himself  so  skilled  a  musician  that  in  1601  we  find  him 
one  of  a  band  who  published  twenty-one  madrigals  on 
the  Triumphs  of  Oriana,  and  later  on  as  the  composer 
of  some  tunes  in  a  book  of  psalms,  two  of  which,  York 
and   Norwich,    are    still   popular.      From  Horton   he 
followed   his  son's  college   career  with  interest,  and 
though    he   appears   to  have  remonstrated  with   him 
because  he  was  giving  up  his  life  wholly  to  poetry  and 
literature,  the  remonstrance  seems  to  have  been  slight. 
Milton's    Latin    poem    in    answer    declares   that   his 
father  only  pretends  to  hate  the  Muses,  thanks  him 
for  "not  sending  him   where   the   way  lay  open   for 
piling  up  money,"  and  is  a  half-laughing  expression  of 
his  belief  that  his  "  dear  father"  did  not  really  mean 
his  blame.     It  is  quite  plain  that  no  one  could  have 
been  more  proud  of  a  son,  or  more  indulgent  of  his 
literary  leisure.     At  the  age  of  thirty-two  Milton  had 
not  earned  a  sixpence. 

His  Education.  St.  Paul's  School,  1620- 
1625. — When  Milton  was  a  boy,  drest  as  his  picture 
shows  him,  in  a  close-fitting  black-braided  dress,  and 


i.J  THE  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  3 

with  a  lace  frill  round  his  throat,  he  had  in  his  own 
words,  "by  the  ceaseless  diligence  and  care  of  my 
father  (whom  God  recompense)  been  exercised  to  the 
tongues  and  some  sciences  as  my  age  would  suffer,  by 
sundry  masters  and  teachers  both  at  home  and  the 
schools."  His  quickness  and  parts  soon  showed  them- 
selves ;  and  we  hear  from  Aubrey  x  that  at  eleven  years 
old  he  was  already  a  poet.  Before  he  went  to  school, 
and  while  he  was  there,  Thomas  Young,  aftenvards 
a  well-known  Puritan  divine  and  one  of  the  authors 
of  Smectymnuns,  was  his  tutor.  "  Under  his  guidance," 
Milton  says,  in  a  Latin  elegy,  "I  penetrated  into 
the  recesses  of  the  Muses,  saw  the  sacred  and 
green  places  of  Parnassus,  and  drank  the  Pierian 
cups,"  describing  in  this  lofty  manner  the  fact  that 
Young  first  led  him  to  make  verses.  In  1622, 
when  Young  left  England,  Milton  had  been  at  St.  Paul's 
School  for  about  two  years  under  Mr.  Gill,  the  head- 
master and  his  son  Alexander  Gill,  and  remained 
with  them  for  four  years,  from  1620  to  1624 — 5.  The 
father  knew  English  poetry  well,  and  part  of  his  book 
Logonomia  Anglica — a  treatise  on  etymology,  syntax, 
prosody,  and  kindred  subjects — is  full  of  examples 
taken  from  the  English  poets.  It  is  probable  that 
the  boy  read  many  of  the  well-known  poems  of  his 
time  while  still  at  school,  and  perhaps  possessed  a 
copy  of  that  Folio-Shakspere  published  in  1623  of 
which  we  know  he  made  use  before  1630.  At  any 
rate,  he  knew  his  Spenser,  and  had  carefully  read 
Sylvester's  translation  of  Du  Bartas'  Divi?ie  Weeks 
and  Words,  a  poem  on  the  Creation  and  the  Fall, 
and  the  sacred  history  of  the  world.  We  find  their 
influence,  and  it  is  supposed  the  influence  of  others, 
in  the  first  poems  we  possess  from  Milton's  hand, 

1  John  Aubrey,  the  antiquarian,  1626 — 97,  knew  Milton  and 
wrote  a  memoir  of  him.  Another  memoir  of  Aubrey's  was 
embodied  by  Anthony  Wood  in  the  Fasti  Oxonienses  (1691 — 2). 
And  the  last  of  these  earliest  sources  of  information  on  Milton's 
life  is  Edward  Phillips'  Memoir,  1694.  Phillips  was  Milton's 
nephew  and  pupil. 


4  MILTON.  [chap. 

"  done  by  him  at  fifteen  years  old,"  a  paraphrase 
of  Psalm  cxiv.,  and  another  of  Psalm  cxxxvi.  They 
have  been  praised,  and  the  latter  Psalm  has  some 
of  his  melody,  but  I  am  inclined  to  agree  with 
Johnson's  half-contemptuous  phrase.  "  They  raise  no 
great  expectations  j  they  would  in  any  numerous 
school  have  obtained  praise,  but  not  excited  wonder." 
Along  with  this  English  training  he  became  a  Latin 
and  Greek  scholar,  till  he  was  "full  ripe  for  acade- 
mical training."  We  may  conjecture  from  a  letter 
written  to  Young  in  1625,  and  acknowledging  the 
gift  of  a  Hebrew  Bible,  that  he  had  already  learned 
some  Hebrew,  and  either  now,  or  later  at  college, 
he  had  by  his  father's  advice  added  to  the  ancient 
tongues  French  and  Italian — "  the  flowers  which 
are  the  boast  of  Gaul,  and  the  speech  which  the  new 
Italian,  attesting  the  barbarian  inroads  by  his  diction, 
pours  from  his  degenerate  mouth."  His  interest  in 
Italian  may  have  been  stirred  by  the  friendship  which 
even  at  school  he  formed  with  Charles  Diodati, 
nephew  of  that  Giovanni  Diodati,  who  made  the  Italian 
version  of  the  Scriptures  in  1607  ;  a  friendship  which 
lasted  unbroken  until  death  dissolved  its  union  but  not 
its  love.  The  ardour  which  he  gave  to  friendship  he 
gave  also  to  his  work.  Aubrey,  Wood,  and  Phillips 
all  bear  witness  to  his  "indefatigable  study,"  his 
"  prompt  wit  and  insuperable  industry  ;  "  and  his  own 
account  of  his  toils  at  school  fitly  closes  the  account 
of  this  part  of  his  life. 

"  My  father  destined  me  while  yet  a  little  boy  for 
the  study  of  humane  letters,  which  I  seized  with  such 
eagerness,  that  from  the  twelfth  year  of  my  age  I 
scarcely  ever  went  from  my  lessons  to  bed  before 
midnight ;  which  indeed  was  the  first  cause  of  injury 
to  my  eyes,  to  whose  natural  weakness  there  were 
also  added  frequent  headaches.  All  which  not  re- 
tarding my  impetuosity  in  learning,  he  caused  me  to 
be  daily  instructed,  both  at  the  grammar-school  and 
under  other  masters  at  home,  and  then  when  I  had 
acquired  various  tongues,    and  also  not  some  insig- 


l]  THE  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  5 

nificant  taste  for  the  sweetness  of  philosophy,  he  sent 
me  to  Cambridge." 

Life  at  Cambridge.  —  Milton  went  up  to 
Cambridge  and  was  enrolled  as  a  lesser  pensioner 
of  Christ's  College  under  the  tutorship  of  William 
Chappell,  afterwards  Dean  of  Cashel  and  Bishop  of 
Cork,  on  the  12th  February,  1624,  that  is,  according 
to  our  reckoning,  in  1625.  He  remained  a  little  more 
than  seven  years  in  the  university,  till  July,  1632, 
when  he  left  it,  a  Master  of  Arts,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-three.  The  rooms  "  honoured  by  Milton's 
name  "  are  still  pointed  out :  the  first-floor  rooms  on 
the  first  stair  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the  court  near 
the  gate,  and  his  presence  dwelt  about  the  place  for 
Wordsworth — 

"  Yea,  our  blind  Poet,  who,  in  his  later  day, 
Stood  almost  single  ;  uttering  odious  truth — 
Darkness  before,  and  danger's  voice  behind. 
Soul  awful — if  the  earth  has  ever  lodged 
An  awful  soul — I  seemed  to  see  him  here 
Familiarly,  and  in  his  scholar's  dress 
Bounding  before  me,  yet  a  stripling  youth, 
A  boy,  no  better,  with  his  rosy  cheeks 
Angelical,  keen  eye,  courageous  look, 
And  conscious  step  of  purity  and  pride." 

The  lines  well  introduce  the  image  of  the  youth  and 
the  image  of  his  mind  during  his  college  life. 
Immediately  after  his  enrolment  he  returned  to 
London,  and  describes  himself  as  "in  the  midst  of 
town  distractions;  not,  as  usual,  surrounded  with 
books."  The  day  after  this  letter  King  James  died, 
27th  March,  1625,  and  twelve  days  after  Milton 
matriculated  at  Cambridge.  We  may  say  then  that 
his  literary  life  began  with  the  accession  of  Charles  I. 
1626. — The  spring  of  1626  found  Milton  hard  at 
work,  "  tied  night  and  day  to  his  books,"  but  a  quarrel 
with  his  tutor  sent  him,  in  a  kind  of  rustication,  to 
London,  till,  before  the  end  of  the  Easter  term,  the 
matter  was  arranged,  and  on  his  return  he  exchanged 
the  tutorship  of  Chappell  for  that  of  Tovey.     That 


6  MILTON.  |chap. 

quarrel  was  supposed  to  have  been  aggravated  by  a 
whipping  received  from  Chappell,  because  over  the 
words  "  some  unkindness "  contained  in  a  note 
derived  by  Aubrey  from  Christopher  Milton,  there  is 
the  interlineation  "  whipt  him."  But  though  Johnson 
hence  assumes  that  Milton  was  one  of  the  last 
students  at  either  university  who  suffered  the  public 
indignity  of  corporal  punishment,  there  is  no  further 
proof  of  it.  Milton's  words  to  his  friend  Diodati  in 
the  spring  of  1626  are  full  of  offended  dignity  :  "At 
present  I  care  not  to  revisit  the  reedy  Cam,  nor  does 
regret  for  my  forbidden  rooms  grieve  me.  Nor  am  I 
yet  in  the  humour  to  bear  the  threats  of  a  harsh 
master,  and  other  things  intolerable  to  my  disposition. 
If  this  be  exile  .  .  .  then  I  refuse  neither  the  name 
nor  the  lot  of  a  runaway,  and  gladly  I  enjoy  my  state 
of  banishment."  In  the  same  elegy  he  describes  his 
life  in  London,  and  it  is  not  that  of  the  starched 
Puritan.  The  "  pomp  of  the  theatre"  and  the 
"garrulous  stage"  or  "furious  tragedy"  drew  him 
forth.  "  The  thick  elms  and  the  troops  of  maidens, 
virgins  of  Britain  to  whom  the  first  glory  is  due," 
delighted  him  more  than  "  the  hoarse  murmuring 
school "  by  the  banks  of  Cam,  and  the  "  naked  fields," 
that  "  ill  suit  the  votaries  of  Apollo." 

It  was  during  this  visit  that  Milton's  first  original 
poem  in  English  was  written — On  the  Death  of  a  Fair 
Infant — the  daughter  of  Mrs.  Phillips,  and  his  niece  ; 
and  he  alludes  in  it  to  the  plague  now  raging  in  London. 
Before  the  year  ended  he  had  written  two  Latin  elegies 
on  the  deaths  of  the  Bishops  of  Winchester  and  Ely, 
and  both  are  marked,  even  though  their  thoughts  are 
commonplace,  by  the  soaring  rapture  with  which  he 
always  entered  on  the  description  of  the  vision  of 
heaven.  The  Bishop  of  Winchester  was  Lancelot 
Andrewes.  It  illustrates  the  great  change  that  passed 
over  Milton  that  in  the  Reason  of  Church-government 
(1641)  he  attacks  the  very  man  he  now  so  highly 
praised.  The  same  year  produced  two  more  Latin 
elegies — on  the  medical  Vice-Chancellor,  Dr.  Gostlin, 


1.1  THE  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  7 

and  on  the  University  Bedel,  Richard  Ridding,  with 
a  long  Latin  poem  on  the  Gunpowder  Plot. 

1627  is  only  marked  by  a  metrical  letter  to  Young, 
in  which  Milton  hopes  that  his  old  master  will  soon 
return  from  Hamburg  to  the  joys  of  his  native  land. 
Next  year  the  hope  was  fulfilled,  and  Young  came 
back  to  be  Vicar  of  Stowmarket.  It  is  said  that 
Milton  not  only  kept  the  promise  he  makes  in  July 
1628  of  visiting  Young,  but  also  that  he  visited  him 
frequently. 

In  1628  he  wrote  a  Latin  poem  for  a  fellow  of 
his  College  who  had  to  be  respondent  in  one  of  the 
philosophical  disputations  then  practised,  on  the  thesis 
— That  Nature  is  not  subject  to  Old  Age.  In  the  May 
of  that  year  he  was  again  in  London,  and  for  the  first 
time  smitten  with  one  of  the  fleeting  loves  of  youth. 
He  describes  his  walk  among  the  "crowd  of  goddesses" 
that  thronged  the  ways,  and  the  youthful  impulse  that 
carried  him  along,  till  one  pre-eminent  over  the  rest 
sent,  at  a  glance,  unaccustomed  pain  into  his  heart. 
"  I  inly  burn  in  love,"  he  cries ;  "  I  am  all  one  flame ; 
meanwhile  she  who  alone  pleased  me  was  snatched 
away  from  my  eyes  never  to  return."  The  rhetorical 
elegy  that  tells  this  story  and  dwells  on  his  passion 
makes  us  feel  that  there  was  nothing  in  it.  Eighteen 
years  afterwards,  when  he  published  the  Latin  elegies, 
he  added  a  postscript  to  this  one,  in  which  he  blames 
the  whole  thing  as  a  youthful  folly.  In  reality  he  was 
entirely  wrapt  up  in  his  work,  and  a  letter  to  Alexander 
Gill  declares  his  intention  to  spend  the  vacation  in 
deep  literary  repose,  and  to  hide  himself  among  the 
bowers  of  the  Muses.  But  this  was  interrupted  by  a 
call  to  deliver  an  oratorical  exercise  in  his  College 
at  the  annual  university  frolic  of  the  students. 

Prolusiones  Oratoriae.  —  The  seven  Latin 
Prolusiones  Oratorice  were  delivered  at  Cambridge  and 
afterwards  published,  along  with  his  Familiar  Letters, 
in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  1674.  The  first  of  these 
is  on  the  question  whether  Day  or  Night  is  most 
excellent.     It  has  a  faint  vein  of  humour,  a  strong 


g  MILTON.  [chap. 

vein  of  love  of  nature,  and  an  allusion  to  the  fact  of 
his  unpopularity  in  the  College.  The  second  is  a 
short  essay  on  the  Music  of  the  Spheres,  which  was 
but  a  symbol  of  the  harmony  of  Law  in  the  Heavens  \ 
but  if  we  "  carried  pure  and  snow  clean  hearts,  then 
should  our  ears  sound  and  be  filled  with  that  most 
sweet  music  of  the  ever- wheeling  stars."  The  third 
is  an  attack  on  the  Scholastic  Philosophy  as  at  once 
useless  and  irritating,  and  is  of  interest  here,  for  it 
goes  to  prove  that  he  supported  the  study  of  facts 
as  the  ground  of  knowledge,  and  was  discontented, 
as  his  prose  works  prove  he  continued  to  be, 
with  the  methods  of  teaching  at  the  universities.  The 
fourth  and  fifth  are  metaphysical  discussions  of  no 
interest  even  to  Milton ;  and  the  seventh  will  here- 
after be  mentioned.  The  sixth,  which  is  the  oratorical 
exercise  mentioned  above,  was  an  address,  half  in 
earnest,  half  in  ponderous  fun,  on  the  subject  that 
"sportive  exercises  are  not  always  in  the  way  of 
philosophical  studies."  Its  literary  interest  lies  in  this 
— that  the  lines  entitled  At  a  Vacation  Exercise,  and 
published  among  his  English  poems,  form  part  of  it, 
and  that  already  we  find  here  the  poet  who  did  not 
care  to  use  his  powers  on  light  or  festive  subjects  or 
jests,  "  in  which  I  do  acknowledge  my  faculty  to  be 
very  slight,"  but  on  graver  ones — 

"  Such  where  the  deep  transported  mind  may  soar 
Above  the  wheeling  poles  ;  and  at  Heaven's  door 
Look  in,  and  see  each  blissful  Deity. " 

The  biographical  interest  is  in  the  proof  it  gives  that 
during  the  first  years  of  his  university  course  there 
were  many  who,  "  on  account  of  disagreements  in  our 
studies,  were  altogether  of  an  unfriendly  and  angry 
spirit "  towards  him  ;  but  that  now  this  quarrel  was 
entirely  made  up,  and  that  he  was  "  pervaded  with 
pleasure  "  at  finding  himself  and  his  powers  frankly 
acknowledged  by  the  University. 

1629. — The  next  year,  March,    1629,  he  took  his 
degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts,  and  signed  "  willingly  and 


I.]  THE  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  9 

ex  animo  "  the  three  articles  of  assent  to  the  Articles, 
the  Common  Prayer,  and  the  King's  Supremacy. 
Immediately  after,  his  Latin  poem,  on  the  Approach 
of  Spring,  is  full  of  youthful  ardour,  and  rings  with 
the  joy  the  youth  felt  in  the  new  life  of  Nature  and  in 
the  love  that  Spring  stirs  within  the  world  and  man. 
But  though  it  celebrates  love  almost  in  the  manner 
of  his  favourite  Ovid,  and  sets  Milton  far  apart 
from  his  later  Puritan  gravity,  it  does  not  represent 
in  any  way  his  deeper  thoughts  or  the  ground  of 
his  character  as  a  young  man.  That  is  done  in 
the  sixth  elegy,  written  to  "  Diodati,  residing  in 
the  Country,"  immediately  after  Christmas,  1629. 
In  the  beginning  we  find  the  Milton  of  the 
Renaissance  lightly  reproving  his  friend  for  thinking 
that  festivity  and  poetry  cannot  go  together.  Song 
loves  Bacchus,  and  Bacchus  loves  song.  Ovid's  verses 
in  exile  were  bad  because  there  were  no  dainties  and 
no  wine.  Have  you  not  music  to  inspire  you  ?  the 
harp  touched  by  nimble  hands,  and  the  lute  that  times 
the  fair  ones  as  they  dance  in  the  tapestried  hall  ? 
Light  elegy  is  the  care  of  many  Gods  ;  and  its  poets 
may  drink  good  old  wine. 

This  is  one  side  of  Milton  ;  but  his  sympathy  with 
these  pleasures  was  a  distant  one  ;  he  could  feel  with 
them,  but  he  did  not  feel  them  in  his  deeper  self;  and 
when  they  appear  as  in  L  Allegro,  they  are  modified 
by  his  native  gravity  and  holiness  to  a  quiet  delight 
in  those  beautiful  things  which  had  with  them  purity 
and  temperance.  The  other  and  the  stronger  side  of 
the  man  appears  in  the  elegy  when  he  speaks 
of  his  own  aspirations  as  a  poet — He  who  sings 
the  holy  decrees  of  the  gods  and  pious  heroes 
and  the  heaven  of  Jove,  let  him  live  sparely,  let 
herbs  be  his  harmless  food,  and  clear  water  from  a 
beechen  cup  give  him  a  sober  draught.  Let  his  youth 
be  chaste  and  free  from  sin,  his  morals  rigid  and  his 
hand  stainless.  So  lived  Orpheus  and  Homer.  For 
the  poet  is  dedicated  to  the  gods  and  is  their  priest. 
This  is  the  truer   Milton — and    the  noble  thoughts 


io  MILTON.  [chap. 

well  introduce  the  poem  which  he  sent  with  this  letter 
to  his  friend  Diodati ;  the  Ode  on  the  Morning  of  the 
Nativity.  "  It  is  a  gift,"  he  says,  "  I  have  presented  to 
Christ's  natal  day.  On  that  very  morning,  at  day 
break,  it  was  first  conceived." 

1630. — The  following  January  saw  the  birth  of 
the  Ode  on  the  Circwncision,  and  about  the  same 
period  we  may  date  the  pieces  entitled  On  Time 
and  At  a  Solemn  Mustek,  and  at  Easter,  the  fragment 
called  The  Passion,  "a  subject  the  author  finding  to 
be  above  the  years  he  had  when  he  wrote  it,  and 
nothing  satisfied  with  what  was  begun,  left  unfinished." 
That  Easter  term  and  the  following  autumn  were 
made  desolate  in  Cambridge  by  the  fierce  descent  of 
the  plague  upon  the  town,  and  Milton's  voice  is  only 
heard  during  the  rest  of  the  year  in  his  epitaph  on 
Shakspere,  which  being  inserted  in  1632  among  other 
verses,  in  the  second  folio  edition  of  Shakspere,  was 
the  first  poem  of  his  that  appeared  in  print. 

1631  opens  with  the  two  epitaphs  on  Hobson, 
the  university  carrier,  and  in  Easter  term  was  made 
the  epitaph  on  the  Marchioness  of  Winchester,  a 
graceful  tribute  to  one  whom  Ben  Jonson  praised  with 
his  rough  power  in  an  elegy  in  the  Underwoods.  The 
summer  was  passed  in  the  country,  "  among  groves 
and  rivers,  and  under  the  beloved  village  elms,  where 
I  had  supreme  delight  with  the  Muses." 

1632  was  his  last  year  at  Cambridge.  The  sonnet 
"  On  Attaining  the  Age  of  Twenty-three,"  was 
probably  written  in  January,  and  he  closed  his 
academic  course  with  an  oration,  delivered  when  he 
took  his  Master's  degree  and  again  subscribed  the 
three  articles  of  Assent  at  the  Commencement  held  on 
July  3.  It  is  the  seventh  of  the  Prolusiones  Oratorio*, 
and  a  noble  address  on  the  subject — That  Knowledge 
makes  Men  happier  than  Ignorance — and  it  is  full  of 
the  enthusiasm  of  one  who  in  his  college  course  had 
felt  the  truth  of  which  he  spoke  ;  whose  soul,  "  not 
content  with  this  darksome  prison-house,  had  reached 
out  far  and  wide,  till  it  filled  the  world  itself  and  space 


I.]  THE  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  n 

beyond  that,  in  the  divine  expatiation  of  its  magni- 
tude," and  who  had,  in  his  devotion  to  knowledge, 
"  by  living  modestly  and  temperately,  tamed  the  first 
impulses  of  fierce  youth,  and  by  reason  and  constancy 
of  study  had  kept  the  heavenly  strength  of  the  mind 
pure  and  stainless."  It  was  thus  he  had  lived,  and 
when  he  left  Cambridge,  he  had  conquered  his  early 
unpopularity.  He  was  now  "  loved  and  admired  by 
the  whole  university,  particularly  by  the  Fellows  and 
most  ingenious  persons  of  his  House."  Moreover  he 
bears  his  own  witness  to  his  college  repute  ten  years 
after  in  the  Defensio  Secunda,  saying  that  he  had 
"more  than  ordinary  respect,  above  any  of  his 
equals,"  from  the  Fellows  of  his  college,  who  wished 
him  to  stay,  and  "  wrote  him  many  letters,  then  and 
afterwards,  full  of  a  singular  affection."  In  spite 
of  his  literary  ardour,  he  did  the  ordinary  work  of  the 
college  with  resolute  activity.  It  is  Wood's  statement 
that  as  at  school  so  at  Cambridge,  "  t'was  usual  with 
him  to  sit  up  till  midnight  at  his  book,  which  was  the 
first  thing  that  brought  his  eyes  into  the  danger  of 
blindness.  By  his  indefatigable  study  he  profited 
exceedingly — performed  the  academical  exercises  to 
the  admiration  of  all,  and  was  esteemed  a  virtuous 
and  sober  person,  yet  not  to  be  ignorant  of  his  own 
parts,"  a  phrase  which  suggests  that  even  at 
Cambridge  Milton  had  that  deliberate  self-confidence 
and  esteem  which  was  one  of  his  marked  character- 
istics, and  which  arose  in  a  great  degree  out  of 
an  individuality  unweakened  by  any  sense  of  shame 
for  wrong,  strengthened  daily  by  the  knowledge  of 
his  own  faithfulness  to  right.  Nor  was  his  personal 
charm  less  than  his  intellectual  power.  He  was  of 
middle  height,  his  complexion  exceeding  fair  and 
of  delicate  colour,  his  voice  delicate  and  tunable. 
Dark  gray  eyes  and  auburn  hair  falling  on  his 
shoulders  went  with  an  oval  face,  and  though 
there  was  so  much  of  the  woman  in  his  look  that 
he  was  called  "the  lady  of  Christ's,"  yet  his  gait 
was  erect  and  manly,  and  his  figure  not  so  very  slight 


12  MILTON.  [chap. 

but  that,  armed  with  his  sword,  in  which  he  had  daily 
practice,  he  thought  himself  a  match  for  any  one.  He 
moved  so  that  men  said  he  had  courage  and  undaunt- 
edness,  and  the  quaintness  of  his  own  statement  that, 
so  far  as  he  knew,  he  had  never  been  thought  ugly 
by  any  one  who  had  seen  him,  is  fully  borne  out  by 
Aubrey's  saying  that  he  "  lodged  a  harmonical  and 
ingenious  soul  in  a  beautiful  and  well-proportioned 
body." 

The  College  Poems. — The  temper  in  which 
these  poems  were  written,  its  ideality,  its  seriousness, 
the  religious  grandeur  and  loud  angelic  trumpet-note 
of  some  of  them,  their  love  of  music  and  of  high 
philosophy  as  the  music  of  the  soul,  is  best  discovered 
in  some  of  the  words  he  uses  when,  in  1642,  he  gave 
an  account  of  his  youth,  its  studies  and  its  aspirations. 
At  first  his  favourite  authors  were  the  smooth  elegiac 
poets.  But  though  applauding  their  art,  he  deplored 
the  men,  and  turned  in  preference  to  the  "  two  famous 
renowners  of  Beatrice  and  Laura,  who  never  write  but 
honour  of  them  to  whom  they  devote  their  verse,  dis- 
playing sublime  and  pure  thoughts  without  transgres- 
sion. And  long  it  was  not  after  when  I  was  confirmed 
in  this  opinion,  that  he  who  would  not  be  frustrate 
of  his  hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things, 
ought  himself  to  be  a  true  poem,  that  is,  a  composi- 
tion and  pattern  of  the  best  and  honourablest  things. 
"  Next — for,  hear  me  out  now,  readers,  that  I  may  tell 
you  whither  my  younger  feet  wandered — I  betook  me 
among  those  lofty  fables  and  romances  which  recount 
in  solemn  cantos  the  deeds  of  knighthood  founded 
by  our  victorious  kings,  and  from  hence  had  a  renown 
over  all  Christendom.  There  I  read  it  in  the  oath  of 
every  knight,  that  he  should  defend,  to  the  expense  of 
his  best  blood  or  of  his  life,  the  honour  and  chastity 
of  virgin  and  matron.  From  whence  even  then 
I  learnt  what  a  noble  virtue  chastity  sure  must  be, 
to  the  defence  of  which  so  many  worthies,  by  such  a 
dear  adventure  of  themselves,  had  sworn.  Only  this 
my  mind  gave  me  that  every  free  and  gentle  spirit 


I.]  THE  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  13 

ought  to  be  born  a  knight.  Thus  from  the  laureate 
fraternity  of  poets,  riper  years,  and  the  ceaseless 
round  of  study  and  reading,  led  me  to  the  shady 
spaces  of  philosophy,  but  chiefly  to  the  divine 
volumes  of  Plato  and  his  equal  Xenophon.  Where, 
if  I  should  tell  ye  what  I  learnt  of  chastity  and 
love — I  mean  that  which  is  truly  so,  whose  charming 
cup  is  only  virtue  "  (he  repeats  the  motive  of  Comus), 
"  which  she  bears  in  her  hand  to  those  who  are 
worthy ;  the  rest  are  cheated  with  a  thick  intoxi- 
cating potion  which  a  certain  sorceress,  the  abuser  of 
Love's  name,  carries  about — and  how  the  first  and 
chiefest  office  of  Love  begins  and  ends  in  the  soul, 
producing  those  happy  twins  of  her  divine  generation, 
Knowledge  and  Virtue — with  such  abstracted  subli- 
mities as  these,  it  might  be  worth  your  listening." 

This  stately  purity  of  thought  and  life  is  one  of  the 
foundations  of  his  stately  style,  and  it  was  the  temper 
of  his  youth  and  the  ground  tone  of  the  College  poems. 
The  earliest  among  them,  On  the  Death  of  a  Fair 
Infant,  is  like  the  first  poetry  of  young  men, 
imitative.  The  first  stanza  recalls  Shakspere,  the 
rest,  till  near  the  end,  Spenser,  whose  stanza,  leaving 
out  the  sixth  and  seventh  lines,  is  adopted.  Spenser's 
very  manner  is  used,  and  certain  peculiarities  of  his 
rhythm ;  and  the  classical  allusions,  which  are 
sometimes  absurdly  out  of  tune  with  the  subject,  and 
already  exhibit  one  of  Milton's  faults — the  want  of 
proportion  between  the  thought  and  its  illustration — 
are  done  also  in  Spenser's  way.  In  the  middle 
of  the  poem  Milton  himself  is  heard  in  such  lines 
as,  Whether  above  that  high  first-moving  sphere,  and 
Or  that  crowned  Matron,  sage,  white-robed  Truth,  and 
still  more  vigorously  at  the  end  of  the  ninth  stanza, 
till,  in  the  two  last,  imitation  and  classicism  are 
wholly  forgotten,  and  Milton  appears  as  the  youthful 
Puritan,  with  the  Puritan  sense  of  national  sin,  with 
reverent  and  homely  piety,  not  as  yet  sublime.  The 
Vacatiofi  Exercise  was  written  two  years  later. 
This  is  remarkable  for  its  invocation  to  his  native 


i4  MILTON.  [chap. 

tongue,  whose  service  he  means  to  use  in  some  graver 
subject.  He  seems  to  say  that  the  later  Elizabethan 
poetry  had  been  spoiled  by 

"...  Those  new-fangled  toys,  and  trimming  slight 
Which  takes  our  late  fantastics  with  delight." 

He  commands  English  to  clothe  itself  in  the  rich 
robes  and  gay  attire, 

"  Which  deepest  spirits  and  choicest  wits  desire  ; " 

and  he  proceeds  at  once  to  give  an  example  in  the 
first  fine  Miltonic  outburst  we  have  (lines  33,  &c.)  in 
which  the  voice  doomed  to  sound  forth  majestic 
things  is  heard.  And  we  find  here,  already,  his  epic 
aspiration.  He  hopes  to  sing  hereafter  of  the  gods, 
of  the  heavens,  and  of  the  secret  things  that  came 
to  pass  when  nature  was  in  her  cradle, 

"  And  last,  of  kings  and  queens  and  heroes  old." 

The  Ode  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity  came 
next,  1629.  The  introduction  is  in  the  modified 
stanza  of  Spenser ;  the  rest  of  the  ode  is  written  in 
a  vigorous,  but  somewhat  jolting  metre,  which  the 
felicity  of  its  management,  and  the  curious  felicity 
of  the  diction  redeem  from  clumsiness.  Its  rough 
strength  much  ennobles  passages  where  strength  of 
conception  is  eminent,  but  it  increases  the  shock 
we  receive  from  the  fantastic  conceits  of  the  poem. 
The  argument  is  very  simple.  At  the  Child's  birth 
the  world  was  at  peace,  and  peaceful  all  nature. 
In  the  hush  of  the  universe  the  shepherds  hear  the 
angel  song,  and  heaven  bursts  into  singing,  which, 
were  it  to  last,  the  golden  age  were  come.  But 
so  it  cannot  be,  and  in  sharp  contrast  with  the 
sweet  music  of  joy,  Milton  paints  the  judgment- 
day.  Not  till  after  that  will  be  our  full  bliss,  but 
in  Christ's  birth  that  coming  glory  is  begun.  The 
old  dragon  and  his  brood  are  shorn  of  their  power  • 
all  the  pagan  gods  and  oracles  mourn  and  fly  away, 
and  .the  Virgin  lays  her  Babe  to  rest.     Peace  begins 


I.]  THE  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON,  15 

and  peace  ends  this  splendid  song,  and  between  the 
goals  of  peace,  in  finely  contrasted  music,  the  sacred 
beauty  of  the  Christian  heaven  and  the  solemn  unity 
of  God  is  set  over  against  the  "  dismal  horror  "  and 
polytheism  of  the  pagan  worship.  Yet  he  is  kind 
to  the  Greeks  :  his  love  of  classic  beauty  seized  him 
as  he  wrote  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  stanzas  ; 
and  the  touch  of  medievalism  when  the  ghosts  and 
the  yellow-skirted  fays  slip  away  from  the  morn  com- 
pletes this  strange  Renaissance  mingling  of  Christianity, 
classicism,  and  the  middle  ages. 

The  poems  on  The  Circumcision  and  The  Pas- 
sion are  connected  in  thought  with  the  Ode  on  the 
Nativity,  and  seem  to  have  been  attempts  of  metre 
and  manner  at  the  great  subject  of  the  Redemption. 
They  are  failures,  and  it  is  probable  that  Milton  felt 
that  Giles  Fletcher,  who  with  his  brother  Phineas  was 
the  closest  imitator  of  Spenser,  had  treated  the  sub- 
ject in  this  way  as  well  as  it  could  be  done.  But  the 
abrupt  and  powerful  rhythm  in  which  he  had  wrought 
the  Circumcision,  and  which  suits  so  well  for  the  quick 
rush  and  quick  closing  of  condensed  thought,  pleased 
his  ear,  and  he  used  it,  much  improved,  and  with  great 
force  in  the  lines  On  Time,  and  with  a  glorious 
splendour  in  the  poem  On  a  Solemn  Music,  the  spirit 
and  power  of  which  may  be  best  expressed  by  saying 
— using  his  own  line  about  the  seraphim — that  Milton 

there 

"  His  loud  uplifted  angel  trumpet  blew." 

The  Epitaph  on  Shakspere  needs  no  praise — those 
on  Hobson  only  prove  by  their  cumbrous  witticisms 
how  absent  humour  was  from  Milton's  mind.  He  is 
like  his  own  elephant  in  them  : 

"  The  unwieldy  elephant, 
To  make  them  mirth,  used  all  his  might  and  wreathed 
His  lithe  proboscis." 

The  Epitaph  on  the  Marchioness  of  Winchester 
is  pathetic  and  graceful,  and  though  less  quick  in 
hitting  the  point  than  the  Epitaph  of   Ben  Jonson, 

2 


16  MILTON.  [chap. 

from  which  it  is  imitated,  is  more  tender  and  more 
true.  The  metre,  the  seven-syllabled  trochaic,  the 
trick  of  which,  as  used  with  wonderful  sweetness  by 
Shakspere  and  the  Elizabethans,  we  seem  to  have 
lost,  was  never,  even  by  Milton  himself,  more  ex- 
quisitely used  than  in  this  little  lyric.  As  to  the  Song 
071  May  Morning,  it  is  less  imitative  than  the  rest, 
and  if  a  little  commonplace,  is  yet  natural,  and  pro- 
phesies the  newer  and  happier  manner  of  the 
Allegro. 

Departure  from  Cambridge. — Before  Milton 

left  Cambridge,  he  had  to  consider  what  kind  of  life 

he  would  lead,  and  long  before  his  last  year  at  the 

university  he  had  given  up  the  idea  of  entering  the 

Church.     A  letter  written  to  a  friend,  and  dated  by 

the  sonnet  written  "  On  his  being  Arrived  at  the  Age 

of  Twenty-three,"  which  he  sends  in  the  letter,  and  says 

was  composed  "  some  while  since,"  admits  us  to  his 

thoughts  upon  his  life.     His  friend  had  admonished 

him  for  his  "  tardy  moving,"  and  that  "he  had  given 

up  himself  to  dream  away  his  years  in  the  arms  of 

studious   retirement."      His   letter,   dwelling    on   his 

desire  to  make  use  of  "  the  talent  " — an  image  that 

recurs  in  a  later  sonnet,  "  and  that  one  tale?it  which 

Hwas  death  to  hide — "  and  God's  commandment  to 

use  it,  and  on  his  desire  of  immortal  fame,  says  that 

it  may  be  he  does  not  press  forward  at  once,  having 

"  a   religious  advisement   how  best  to  undergo — not 

taking  thought  of  being  late,  so  it  give  advantage  to 

be  more  fit  .•"  and  the  pith  of  it  all  is  inclosed  in  the 

sonnet,  one  of  the  most  solemn  and  beautiful  pieces 

of  personal  writing  in  English  poetry.     The  fact  was 

that   "  perceiving  what  tyranny   had  invaded   in  the 

Church,  and  that  he  who  took  orders  must  subscribe 

slave,"  and  being  "  Church-outed  by  the  prelates,"  he 

turned,  and  turned  with  infinite  relief  and  joy,  to  a 

literary  life,  especially  to  poetry,  feeling  that  his  style, 

"  and  chiefly  in  versing,  by  certain  vital  signs  it  had, 

was  likely  to  live."     It  was  a  conclusion  which  at  first 

dismayed  his  father,  but  he  records  in  a  Latin  epistle 


I.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  17 

of  this  time,  addressed  to  him,  the  arguments  he 
used,  and  their  affectionate  and  grateful  tone  soon 
conquered  the  old  man's  dislike. 

Life  at  Horton,  1632-38. — On  leaving  Cam- 
bridge, he  went  to  live  with  his  father  at  Horton 
in  Buckinghamshire,  a  man  without  a  business  in  life. 
He  had  thought  of  the  profession  of  the  law,  but  the 
vision  of  a  noble  fame,  not  that  which  is 

"  Set  off  to  the  world,  nor  in  broad  rumour  lies; 
But  lives  and  spreads  aloft  by  those  pure  eyes, 
And  perfect  witness  of  all-judging  Jove  ; 

enthralled  him,  and  he  gave  himself  up  to  quiet  work  in 
quiet  leisure.  "  My  footsteps,"  he  says,  "  shall  avoid 
the  eyes  of  the  profane.  Be  far  off,  watchful  cares,  be 
far  off,  all  quarrels."  With  his  father's  consent, 
then,  he  stayed  at  Horton,  and  "  spent  there  a  complete 
holiday  in  turning  over  the  Greek  and  Latin  writers  ; " 
learning  now  and  then  when  he  went  to  London 
"something  new  in  mathematics  and  music,  in  which 
sciences  he  delighted."  And  in  this  manner  he  passed 
five  years  and  nine  months,  from  July,  1632,  to 
April,  1638,  that  is,  till  he  was  thirty  years  of  age. 

The  place  was  pretty,  a  land  of  pasture,  and  corn, 
and  wood,  and  orchard,  watered  by  many  streams, 
and  fed  by  the  Colne.  Not  far  off  flowed  the  Thames, 
and  a  short  walk  would  bring  Milton  to  the  meadows  of 
Eton,  and  in  sight  of  the  towers  of  Windsor,  "  bosomed 
high  in  tufted  trees."  Among  this  scenery,  and 
coloured  by  it,  five  poems  were  made  by  Milton,  the 
Sonnet  to  the  Nightingale,  the  Allegro  and  Penseroso, 
the  Arcades,  and  the  Comus  ;  and  of  these  the  Comns 
written  in  1634,  is  justly  thought  to  be  the  last.  The 
Lycidas,  finished  in  November,  1637,  was  perhaps 
composed  in  London.  These  six  poems  represent  the 
poetic  activity  of  six  years. 

The  Sonnet  — 

"  O  nightingale,  that  on  yon  blooming  spray 
Warblest  at  eve,  when  all  the  woods  are  still," 

strikes  the  same   two  notes   of  bright  and  pensive 


18  MILTON.  [chap. 

sentiment  about  nature  and  man  which  are  worked 
into  full  subjects  in  the  Allegro  and  Penseroso.  It  is 
the  sonnet  of  a  Lover  and  a  Poet,  and  one  might 
conjecture  from  it  that  Milton  was  at  this  time  not 
quite  fancy-free. 

"  Whether  the  Muse  or  Love  call  thee  his  mate, 
Both  them  I  serve,  and  of  their  train  am  I." 

The  Allegro  and  Penseroso,  the  resem- 
blances to  which  in  previous  writers,  as  in  Burton, 
and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  only  prove  that  Milton 
had  read  English  literature,  and  could  better  what 
he  borrowed  if  he  borrowed  it — represent  Nature, 
and  Man,  and  Art  as  they  appear  to  a  man  filled 
with  an  imaginative  joy  and  an  imaginative  sadness. 
The  Allegro,  which  begins  with  the  early  morning 
and  ends  at  night,  is  paralleled  thought  by  thought, 
scene  by  scene,  with  the  Penseroso,  which  begins 
with  the  late  evening  and  ends  towards  the  noon  of 
the  next  day.  But  the  Penseroso  closes  with  the 
wish — which,  not  paralleled  in  the  Allegro,  makes 
us  know  that  Milton  preferred  the  pensive  to  the 
mirthful  temper — That  he  may  live  on  into  old  age, 
the  contemplative  life, 

"  Till  old  experience  do  attain, 

To  something  like  prophetic  strain." 

Both  poems  are  ushered  in  with  a  stately  intro- 
duction, and  change  to  a  quicker  and  lighter  measure, 
of  which  the  scheme  appears  to  be  trochaic,  though 
iambics  are  often  introduced  and  especially  in  the 
Penseroso.  The  greatest  pains  is  bestowed  upon  the 
rhythm.  There  is  nothing  hazarded,  nothing  careless, 
yet  the  poems  move,  it  seems,  with  careless  grace. 
They  are  a  landmark  in  the  metrical  art  of  poetry,  and 
they  are  conscious  of  their  art  throughout. 

The  words  are  arranged  and  chosen  to  imitate  or 
suggest  the  thing  described  :  alliteration  is  used  to 
heighten  the   effect,  but   much   more  sparingly  than 


I.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  19 

by  the  earlier  men,  such  as  his  "original,"  Spenser.1 
Throughout  the  Allegro  the  verse  frequently  rushes 
as  if  borne  along  by  very  joy  ;  its  character  is  swift- 
ness and  smoothness.  Few  if  any  pauses  occur  in  the 
midst  of  the  lines.  Throughout  the  Penseroso  the 
verse  frequently  pauses  in  the  midst  of  the  lines.  It 
rests,  like  a  pensive  man  who,  walking,  stops  to  think, 
and  its  movement  is  slow,  even  stately. 

Both  poems  are  full  of  natural  description.  But  it 
is  neither  the  description  which  imposes  one's  own 
feeling  on  nature,  nor  the  moralising  description  of 
Gray,  nor  does  it  even  resemble  that  description  which 
in  Shelley  and  Wordsworth  was  built  on  the  thought 
that  Nature  was  alive  and  man's  companion.  It  is 
the  pure  description  of  things  seen,  seen  not  neces- 
sarily through  the  poet's  own  mood,  but  always  in 
direct  relation  to  Man  and  to  the  special  mood  of 
man's  mind  which  Milton  has  chosen  as  the  ground- 
work for  each  poem. 

The  allusiveness  of  the  poems — and  extreme 
allusiveness  is  a  characteristic  mark,  and  often  a  fault, 
of  the  poetry  of  Milton — pleases  by  the  claim  it 
makes  on  study.  The  extreme  simplicity  of  the  two 
motives — and  Milton,  however  his  poems  are  in- 
volved, has  always  a  simple  motive — makes  these 
poems  simple,  and  this  is  one  reason  why  children 
as  well  as  others  understand  and  have  pleasure  in 
them.  The  picturesqueness  of  the  scenes,  the  clear- 
cut  and  vivid  outline  of  the  things  described — and 
this  also  is  a  constant  excellence  of  Milton,  though 
he  sometimes  wilfully  spoils  it  by  digression, — is  also 
a  source  of  delight  to  young  and  old:  while  the  work 
of  the  higher  imagination  is  felt  as  a  shaping  power 
in  the  poems,  as  the  Orphean  music  which  has  har- 
monized and  built  them  into  that  unity  which  is  the 
highest  and  last  demand  of  Art. 

The  Arcades. — It  may  be  that  the  Arcades  has 
no  right  to  this  place,  that  the  arguments  based   on 

1  "Milton  has  acknowledged  to  me,"   says  Dryden,   "that 
Spenser  was  his  original." 


20  MILTON.  [chap. 

its  position  in  the  Cambridge  MSS.  which  put  it  back 
to  1 63 1,  are  true;  but  it  is  at  least  so  linked  to  Comns 
in  poetical  relationship  and  in  its  history  that  it  is  best 
to  discuss  it  here.  It  is  a  small  portion  of  a  masque 
given  by  some  noble  persons  of  her  family  to  the 
Countess  Dowager  of  Derby  at  Harefield,  at  evenfall  : 
the  masquers  coming  up  the  avenue  of  elms  called  the 
Queen's  Walk,  a  memorial  of  the  visit  of  Elizabeth 
during  which  she  had  heard  Burbidge's  players  first 
play  Othello.  The  subject  was  worth  the  muse  of 
Milton.  The  Countess,  now  in  venerable  age,  was 
not  only  a  great  figure  in  English  society — a  Spencer 
by  birth,  married  first  to  Lord  Strange,  afterwards  Lord 
Derby ;  married  secondly  to  the  Lord-Keeper  Egerton 
afterwards  Lord  Chancellor  to  King  James,  Baron 
Ellesmere  and  Viscount  Brackley — she  was  also 
bound  up  with  the  literature  of  England.  Lord 
Strange,  in  his  time  a  poet  and  a  patron  of  the  drama, 
is  the  Amyntas  of  Spenser.  She  herself  is  the  Ama- 
ryllis of  Colin  Cloufs  Come  Home  Again  ;  and  of  the 
three  sisters  whom  Spenser  had  known  at  Althorpe 
in  Elizabeth's  early  time,  she  was  his  favourite.  To 
Elizabeth,  Lady  Carey,  he  dedicated  Muiopotmos,  to 
Anne,  Lady  Compton,  his  Mother  Hubbard's  Tale,  but 
to  Alice  Spenser,  then  Lady  Strange,  he  inscribed  in 
1 59 1,  The  Teares  of  the  Muses,  a  poem  that  describes 
and  mourns  over  the  state  of  literature.  When  we  think 
then  of  how  much  of  the  great  past  seemed  to  meet 
in  her,  we  are  not  surprised  by  Milton's  outburst : — 

"  Might  she  the  wise  Latona  be, 
Or  the  towered  Cybele, 
Mother  of  a  hundred  gods  ? 
Juno  dares  not  give  her  odds." 

The  poem  itself  is  slight,  the  introduction  not  very 
worthy.  The  eighty  lines  of  rhymed  verse  seem  to 
be  hampered  in  thought  and  movement  by  the  needs 
of  rhyme.  One  is  driven  to  feel  how  much  better 
Milton  would  have  made  them  in  the  vehicle  of  blank 
verse.     But  they  contain  one  splendid  passage  on  his 


I.J  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  21 

favourite  subject  of  the  spheral  music  that  the  nine 
Sirens  sing ; — 

11  And  the  low  world  in  measured  motion  draw 
After  the  heavenly  tune." 

The  songs  which  close  it  are  pretty,  but  below 
Milton's  power.  The  whole  piece,  in  fact,  bears  the 
stamp  of  the  occasional. 

Comus. — The  name  Comus  was  given  to  this 
masque  after  Milton's  death.  Its  proper  description 
is  "A  Masque  Presented  at  Ludlow  Castle,  1634, 
before  the  Earl  of  Bridgewater,  Lord  President  of 
Wales."  Lord  Bridgewater  was  stepson  of  the 
Countess  of  Derby  and  son  of  Lord  Chancellor 
Ellesmere,  and  was  married  to  his  stepsister,  Lady 
Frances  Stanley.  He  was  made  Lord  President  of 
Wales  and  went  down,  with  his  powers  freshly  defined 
by  a  Royal  Letter,  to  the  castle  of  Ludlow,  his  official 
seat,  in  163 1.  His  family  accompanied  him,  and 
among  them  his  youngest  daughter  Lady  Alice  Eger- 
ton  and  her  two  younger  brothers,  Viscount  Brackley 
and  Mr.  Thomas  Egerton.  These  three  were  the 
Lady,  and  The  Two  Brothers  in  the  Masque  of 
Comus  which  was  now  acted,  at  the  close  of  the  long 
festivities,  on  Michaelmas  night,  1634,  in  the  great  hall 
of  the  castle.  Lawes,1  the  musician,  took  the  part  of 
the  Attendant  Spirit.  It  is  not  known  who  acted 
Comus  and  Sabrina. 

The  first  scene  discovered  a  wild  wood,  and  Lawes, 
as  the  Attendant  Spirit,  descended,  singing  a  part  of  the 
epilogue  transposed  for  the  occasion,  the  words  To 
the  ocean  being  altered  to  "  From  the  heavens,"  and 
ending   with    the    line,   Where  a   cherub   soft  reposes, 

1  Lawes,  son  of  Thomas  Lawes,  Vicar- Choral  of  Canterbury, 
a  well-known  musician,  who,  Milton  says,  reformed  his  art. 
Composer  of  airs  to  the  poems  of  Waller,  Carew,  and  Cart- 
wright.  Published  Ayres  and  Dialogues  for  one,  two,  and  three 
voices.  Introduced,  it  may  be  from  Italy,  a  softer  character 
into  English  music.  See  Comus,  lines  84,  &c,  494,  &c. ,  and 
Sonnet  XIII.,  in  which  his  art  and  its  smoothness  are  dwelt 
upon,  also  his  faith  and  worth . 


22  MILTON.  [chap. 

changed  from  "  Where  young  Adonis  oft  reposes" 
so  that  it  was  a  song  of  arrival,  not  of  departure. 
Then  the  speech  was  made  in  which  the  matter  of 
the  masque  was  laid  down  and  connected  with  the 
special  occasion  in  the  lines  beginning  : — 

"  And  all  this  tract  that  fronts  the  fallen  sun 
A  noble  peer  of  mickle  trust  and  power 
Has  in  his  charge." 

Comus  then  enters  and  his  crew ;  and  then  the  Lady 
who  is  lured  away ;  until  her  brothers,  instructed  by 
the  Spirit  in  the  guise  of  Thyrsis,  and  helped  of 
Sabrina,  rush  in  and  rescue  her  from  Comus.  The 
scene  changes  then,  Ludlow  Castle  appears,  and  the 
festal  games ;  the  country  dancers  disperse  when 
Lawes,  as  the  Spirit,  presents  Lady  Alice  and  her 
brothers  to  the  earl ;  they  dance  a  courtly  measure, 
and  the  Spirit  speaks  the  epilogue — "  But  now  my 
task  is  smoothly  done." 

The  play  was  published  anonymously  by  Lawes  in 
1637,  Milton  consenting  with  some  shy  shrinking  from 
the  venture.  It  was  he  who  supplied  the  motto,  and 
said  with  the  shepherd  in  Virgil, 

"  Eheu  !  quid  volui  misero  mihi  ;  floribus  Austrum 
Perditus." 

It  was  republished  with  the  first  collective  edition  of 
his  poems  in  1645,  and  again  in  1673.  Since  then 
it  has  become  far-famed,  and  critics  have  sought 
for  its  sources  and  have  found  them  in  Peele's 
Old  Wives'  Tale,  in  Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess, 
in  Ben  Jonson's  masque  of  Pleasure  Reco?iciled 
to  Virtue,  in  a  Latin  extravaganza  called  Comus, 
by  Hendrik  van  der  Putten,  a  Dutchman,  and 
in  the  Odyssey;  but  it  little  matters  where  this 
and  that  came  from,  the  poem,  as  we  have  it, 
is  Milton's  in  every  line,  in  thought,  in  style,  in 
build,  in  imaginative  and  moral  power.  It  settled 
Milton's  rank  as  a  poet  among  all  men  capable  of  judg- 
ing. Sir  Henry  Wotton's  voice  was,  we  may  be  sure,  the 
voice  of  all  men  of  culture  : — "  A  dainty  piece  of  enter- 


I.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  23 

tainment,  wherein  I  should  much  commend  the  tragical 
part  if  the  lyrical  did  not  ravish  me  with  a  certain  Doric 
delicacy  in  your  songs  and  odes,  whereunto  I  must 
plainly  confess  to  have  seen  yet  nothing  parallel  in  our 
language."  The  phrase  Doric  delicacy  is  not  ill-said  ; 
but  it  is  not  in  the  lyrics,  which  are  excelled  by  many 
of  the  Elizabethan  lyrics,  but  in  the  full-weighted 
dignity  of  the  blank  verse  that  the  poem  was  then 
unparalleled.  Moreover  it  was  marked  by  a  greater 
grandeur  of  style  and  thought,  by  a  graver  beauty, 
and  by  a  more  exercised  and  self-conscious  art  than 
any  poem  of  its  character  which  England  had  as  yet 
known.  It  belonged  to  the  Elizabethan  spirit,  but 
it  went  beyond  it  and  made  a  new  departure  for 
English  poetry.  The  way  it  showed  could  not  be 
walked  in  by  the  men  of  the  Restoration  and  the 
Revolution.  It  was  before  its  time ;  but  that  is  at 
once  the  good  and  the  evil  fortune  of  a  great  genius. 

Johnson's  sturdy  criticism  on  it  has  much  force  and 
is  admirably  written  ;  but  in  condemning  it  as  a  drama, 
he  is  carried  beyond  good  sense  to  lose  sight  of  its 
beauty  as  a  poem.  Moreover  his  arrows  do  not  hit  the 
target.  Comus  is  not  a  regular  drama,  but  a  masque, 
and  a  masque  obeys  laws  distinct  from  those  of 
the  regular  drama.  The  masque  depends  for 
success  not  only  on  the  poetry,  which  here  is  splen- 
did, but  also  and  chiefly  on  its  occasion,  and  away 
from  the  occasion  its  dramatic,  fitness  cannot  be 
judged.  It  depends  also  on  the  decoration  and 
music,  and  these  are  so  knit  to  the  occasion  that, 
even  when  they  are  reproduced,  they  have  not  the 
same  value  as  at  the  time  they  were  first  made.  No 
one  can  judge  how  far  Comus  contradicts  Johnson's 
judgment  of  its  want  of  interest  as  a  dramatic  repre- 
sentation, unless  he  can  recreate  in  his  mind  not  only 
the  scene,  and  the  "  occasion,"  and  all  its  interests,  but 
also  all  the  feelings  of  the  spectators,  and  the  thought 
of  the  story  in  their  minds  to  which  the  masque 
spoke ;  and  this  was  work  of  which  Johnson  at  least 
seems   incapable.      Comus  was  written  for   such   an 


24  MILTON.  [chap. 

occasion,  and  only  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  moment 
can  its  dramatic  merits  be  judged. 

Still  that  Comus  soars  beyond  the  occasion  is  plain 
enough.  It  displaced  itself  as  a  masque  to  rise  into 
a  poem  to  the  glory  and  victory  of  virtue.  And  its 
virtue  lies  in  the  mastery  of  the  righteous  will  over 
sense  and  appetite.  It  is  a  song  to  Temperance  as  the 
ground  of  freedom,  to  temperance  as  the  guard  of  all 
the  virtues,  to  beauty  as  secured  by  temperance,  and 
its  central  point  and  climax  is  in  the  pleading  of  these 
motives  by  the  Lady  against  their  opposites  in  the 
mouth  of  the  Lord  of  sensual  Revel. 

It   is   moreover  raised  above  an  ethical  poem  by 

its  imaginative  form  and  power  ;  and  its  literary  worth 

enables  us  to  consider  it,  if  we  choose,  apart  from  its 

dramatic  form.     Its   imagination,  however,   sinks   at 

times,   and  one    can  scarcely  explain  this  otherwise 

than  by  saying  that  the  Elizabethan  habit  of  fantastic 

metaphor  clung  to    Milton  at  this  time.     When  he 

does  fall,  the  fall  is  made  more  remarkable   by  the 

soaring  strength  of  his  loftier  flight  and  by  the  majesty 

of  the  verse.     Nothing  can  be  worse  in  conception 

than  the  comparison  of  night  to  a  thief  who  shuts  up, 

for  the  sake  of  his  felony,  the  stars  whose  lamps  burn 

everlasting   oil,    in   his   dark  lantern.     The  better  it 

is  carried  out  and  the  finer  the  verse,  the  worse  it  is. 

And  yet  it  is  instantly  followed  by  the  great  passage 

about  the  fears  of  night,  the  fantasies  and  airy  tongues 

that    syllable    men's    names,    and    by   the    glorious 

appeal  to  conscience,  faith,  and  God,  followed  in  its 

turn  by  the  fantastic  conceit  of  the  cloud  that  turns 

out  its    silver   lining    on    the    night.       This    is    the 

Elizabethan  weakness   and  strength,   the  mixture  of 

gold  and  clay,  the  want  of  that  art-sensitiveness  which 

feels  the  absurd  :  and  Milton,  even  in  Paradise  Lost, 

when  he  had  got  further  from  his  originals,  falls  into 

it  not  unfrequently.    It  is  a  fault  which  runs  through 

a  good  deal  of  his  earlier  work,  it  is  more  seen  in 

Comus  than  elsewhere;  but  it  was  the  fault  of  that 

poetic  age. 


I.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  25 

October,  1634 — November,  1637.  —  Three 
years  passed  after  the  making  of  Cotmis  before  the 
making  of  Lycidas.  Milton  went  to  and  fro  between 
Horton  and  London,  and  probably  stayed  some  time 
at  Oxford  in  1635,  when  he  was  incorporated  as 
Master  of  Arts  of  that  University.  He  suffered  the 
loss  of  his  mother  in  April,  1637  ;  and  we  find  him 
shortly  after  the  death  of  Ben  Jonson,  in  the  August 
of  that  year,  writing  to  Diodati  from  London.  A  few 
phrases  in  these  letters  are  of  interest  and  illustrate 
his  work.  "My  genius,"  he  says,  "is  such  that  no 
delay,  no  rest,  no  care  or  thought  almost  of  anything 
holds  me  aside  until  I  reach  the  end,  and  round  off 
as  it  were  some  period  of  my  studies."  "  What  God 
has  resolved  concerning  me,"  he  says  in  another  letter, 
"  I  know  not,  but  this  I  know  at  least — He  has  in- 
stilled into  me  a  vehement  love  of  the  beautiful. 
Not  with  so  much  labour,  as  the  fables  have  it,  is 
Ceres  said  to  have  sought  her  daughter  Proserpine,  as 
I  am  wont  day  and  night  to  seek  for  this  idea  of  the 
beautiful  through  all  the  forms  and  faces  of  things 
....  You  ask  what  I  am  thinking  of?  So  may  the 
good  Deity  help  me,  of  immortality — I  am  pluming 
my  wings  and  meditating  flight."  The  letter  closes 
with  an  account  of  his  reading  of  Greek  and  Italian 
History,  and  his  wish  to  leave  a  place  where  he  was 
cramped,  and  to  find  a  lodging  in  some  Inn  of  the 
lawyers  where  there  was  a  pleasant  and  shady  walk. 

Lycidas. — What  he  meditated  at  this  time  and 
through  his  Italian  journey  was  an  Epic,  but  his  wings 
bore  him  now  into  the  flight  of  Lycidas.  We  see  in  it 
that  vehement  love  of  the  beautiful,  and  I  have  no 
doubt  that  when  he  began  it  he  wrote  it  with  the  close 
intensity  of  which  he  speaks  above.  It  was  finished  in 
November,  1637.  It  could  scarcely  have  been  begun 
till  the  end  of  September,  for  there  is  no  mention 
either  of  its  subject  or  itself  in  his  letters  to  Diodati, 
the  last  of  which  is  dated  September  23.  Edward 
King,  its  subject,  was  a  college  friend  of  Milton's,  a 
favourite  of  fortune  and  of  all  who  knew  him.     Sailing 


26  MILTON.  [chap 

from  Chester  to  Dublin  to  visit  his  people,  the  ship 
struck  on  a  rock  in  a  calm  sea,  and  he  was  drowned. 
His  friends  at  Cambridge  proposed  a  volume  of 
memorial  verses  in  Greek,  Latin,  and  English.  It 
saw  the  light  in  1638,  and  Milton's  Lycidas  is  the 
last  poem  in  the  book. 

It  is  a  pastoral,  and  in  the  form  of  other  pastorals ; 
with  its  introduction  and  its  epilogue,  and  between 
them  the  monody  of  the  shepherd  who  has  lost  his 
friend.  Under  the  guise  of  one  shepherd  mourning 
another,  all  Milton's  relations  with  Edward  King  are 
expressed,  and  all  his  thoughts  about  his  character 
and  genius ;  and  the  poem,  to  be  justly  judged,  must 
be  read  with  the  conditions  of  the  pastoral  as  a  form 
of  verse  present  to  the  mind.  That  is  enough  to  dis- 
pose of  Johnson's  unfavourable  criticism,  which  quarrels 
with  the  poem  for  its  want  of  passion  and  want  of 
nature,  and  for  its  improbability.  It  is  not  a  poem  of 
passionate  sorrow,  but  of  admiration  and  regret  ex- 
pressed with  careful  art  and  in  a  special  artistic  form ; 
and  the  classical  allusions  and  shepherd  images  and 
the  rest  are  the  necessary  drapery  of  the  pastoral,  the 
art  of  which,  and  the  due  keeping  to  form  in  which, 
are  as  important  to  Milton,  and  perhaps  more  so,  than 
his  regret.  We  are  made  aware  of  this  when  we  find 
Milton  twice  checking  himself  in  the  conduct  of 
the  poem  for  having  gone  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
pastoral. 

The  metrical  structure,  which  is  partly  borrowed 
from  Italian  models,  is  as  carefully  wrought  as  the 
rest,  and  harmonized  to  the  thoughts.  "  Milton's 
ear  was  a  good  second  to  his  imagination."  Lycidas 
appeals  not  only  to  the  imagination,  but  to  the 
educated  imagination.  There  is  no  ebb  and  flow  of 
poetical  power  as  in  Covins ;  it  is  an  advance  on  all 
his  previous  work,  and  it  fitly  closes  the  poetic  labour 
of  his  youth.  It  is  needless  to  analyse  it,  and  all 
criticism  is  weaker  than  the  poem  itself.  Yet  we  may 
say  that  one  of  its  strange  charms  is  its  solemn  under- 
tone rising  like  a  religious  chaunt  through  the  elegiac 


j.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  27 

musick  ;  the  sense  of  a  stern  national  crisis  in  the 
midst  of  its  pastoral  mourning ;  the  sense  of  Milton's 
grave  force  of  character  among  the  flowers  and 
fancies  of  the  poem ;  the  sense  of  the  Christian 
religion  pervading  the  classical  imagery.  We  might 
say  that  these  things  are  ill-fitted  to  each  other.  So 
they  would  be,  were  not  the  art  so  fine  and  the  poetry 
so  over-mastering ;  were  they  not  fused  together  by 
genius  into  a  whole  so  that  the  unfitness  itself 
becomes  fascination. 

Political  and  Social  Aspects  of  these 
Poems. — Puritanism,  when  Milton  began  to  write, 
was  not  universally  apart  from  literature  and  the  fine 
arts.  In  its  staid  and  pure  religion  Milton's  work  had 
its  foundation,  but  the  temple  he  had  begun  to  build 
upon  it  was  quarried  from  the  ancient  and  modern 
arts  and  letters  of  Greece  and  Italy  and  England. 
And  filling  the  temple  rose  the  peculiar  incense  of 
the  Renaissance.  The  breath  of  that  spirit  is  felt  in 
the  classicalism  of  the  Ode  to  the  Nativity,  in  the  love 
proclaimed  for  Shakespeare,  in  the  graceful  fancy  of 
the  Epitaph  to  Lady  Winchester,  and  in  the  gaiety  of 
the  Ode  to  a  At  ay  Morning.  But  a  new  element,  other 
than  any  the  Renaissance  could  produce,  is  here ;  the 
element  that  filled  the  Psalms  of  David,  the  deep, 
personal,  passionate  religion  of  the  Puritan,  possessing, 
and  possessed  by,  God.  Over  against  the  Renaissance 
musick  is  set  the  high  and  devout  strain  of  the  first 
sonnet  and  of  the  Odes  to  Ti?ne  and  A  Solemn  Musick. 
Even  while  at  Cambridge,  the  double  being  in  Milton 
makes  itself  felt,  the  struggle  between  the  two  spirits 
of  the  time  is  reflected  in  his  work.  These  con- 
trasted spirits  in  him  became  defined  as  the  political 
and  social  war  deepened  around  his  life.  The 
second  sonnet  still  is  gay,  fresh  with  the  morn  of  love, 
Petrarca  might  have  written  it ;  the  Allegro  does  not 
disdain  the  love  of  nature,  the  rustic  sports,  the  pomp 
of  courts,  the  playhouse  and  the  land  of  faery,  nor  does 
the  Pe?iseroso  refuse  to  haunt  the  dim  cathedral.  But 
yet,  in  these  two  poems  more  than  in  the  Cambridge 


28  MILTON.  [chap. 

poems,  the  deepening  of  the  struggle  is  felt.  Milton 
seems  to  presage  in  them  that  the  time  would  come 
when  the  gaiety  of  England  would  cease  to  be  shared 
in  by  serious  men  ;  when  the  mirth  of  the  cavalier 
would  shut  out  the  pleasures  derived  from  lofty 
Melancholy,  because  they  shut  out  the  devil ;  as  the 
Puritan  pensiveness  would  be  driven  to  shut  out  the 
pleasures  of  Mirth,  because  they  shut  out  God.  While 
he  gives  full  weight  in  the  Allegro  to  "  unreproved 
pleasures  free,"  he  makes  it  plain  in  the  Penseroso 
that  he  prefers  the  sage  and  holy  pleasures  of  thought- 
ful sadness.  These  best  befitted  the  solemn  aspect  of 
the  time.  A  few  years  later  and  the  presage  had  come 
true.  Milton  is  driven  away  from  even  the  Allegro 
point  of  view.  In  Comus  the  wild  licence  of  the 
court  society  is  set  over  against  the  grave  and  tem- 
perate virtue  of  a  Puritan  life.  The  unchastity,  the 
glozing  lies,  the  glistering  apparel  that  hid  moral 
deformity,  the  sloth  and  drunkenness,  the  light  fan- 
tastic round  x  of  the  enchanter's  character  and  court, 
are  (it  seems  likely)  Milton's  allegory  of  the  Court 
society  of  his  time.  The  stately  philosophy  of  the 
Brothers  which  had  its  root  in  subduing  passion  and  its 
top  in  the  love  of  God ;  the  virginal  chastity  of  the 
Lady,  and  at  the  end  the  releasing  power  of  Sabrina's 
purity,  exalt  and  fill  up  more  sternly  the  idea  of  the 
Penseroso  and  symbolise  that  noble  Puritanism  which 
loved  learning  and  beauty  only  when  they  were  pure, 
but  holiness  far  more  than  either.  It  may  be,  as  Mr. 
Browne  supports,  that  there  is  a  second  allegory  within 
the  first,  of  Laud  and  his  party  as  the  Sorcerer  com- 
mending the  cup  of  Rome  by  wile  and  threat  to  the 
lips  of  the  Church  and  enforcing  it  by  fine  and  im- 
prisonment j  paralysing  in  stony  fetters  the  Lady  of 
the  Church.  It  may  be  that  Milton  called  in  this  poem 
on  the  few  who,  having  resisted  like  the  Brothers, 
but  failed  to  set  the  Church  free,  ought  now  to  employ 
a  new  force,  the  force  of  Purity ;  but  this  aspect  of 

1  Mr.    Browne  has  well  drawn    notice    to  the  echo  of  the 
Allegro  in  the  songs  of  Comus : 


I.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  29 

the  struggle  is  at  least  not  so  clear  in  Covins  as  in 
Lycidas.  In  Lycidas  Milton  has  thrown  away  the  last 
shreds  of  Church  and  State  and  is  Presbyterian.  The 
strife  now  at  hand  starts  into  prominence,  and  not  to 
the  bettering  of  the  poem  as  a  piece  of  art.  It  is 
brought  in — and  the  fault  is  one  which  frequently 
startles  us  in  Milton — without  any  regard  to  the  unity 
of  feeling  in  the  poem.  The  passage  on  the  hireling 
Church  looks  like  an  after-thought,  and  Milton  draws 
attention  to  it  in  the  argument.  "  The  author  .  .  . 
by  occasion  foretells  the  ruin  of  our  corrupted  clergy 
then  in  their  height."  But  he  does  not  leave  Laud 
and  his  policy  nor  the  old  Church  tenderly.  When 
he  felt  strongly,  he  wrote  fiercely.  The  passage  is  a 
splendid  and  a  fierce  cry  of  wrath,  and  the  rough 
trumpet  note,  warlike  and  unsparing,  which  it  sounds 
against  the  unfaithful  herdsmen  who  are  sped  and  the 
"  grim  wolf  with  privy  paw,"  was  to  ring  louder  and 
louder  through  the  prose  works,  and  finally  to  clash 
in  the  ears  of  those  very  Presbyterians  whom  he  now 
supported.  There  is  then  a  steady  progress  of  thought 
and  of  change  in  the  poems.  The  Milton  of  Lycidas 
is  not  the  Milton  of  Comus.  The  Milton  of  Comus  is 
not  the  Milton  of  the  Penseroso,  less  still  of  the  Allegro. 
The  Milton  of  the  Penseroso  is  not  the  Milton  of  the 
Ode  to  the  Nativity.  Nothing  of  the  Renaissance  is 
left  now  but  its  learning  and  its  art. 

Continental  Journey,  1638-39. — Milton  left 
London  in  1638,  ten  years  before  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia,  in  the  last  decade  of  the  Thirty  Years 
War.  Passing  through  Paris  in  May,  he  saw  Grotius, 
"the  first  of  living  Dutchmen,"  who  took  his  visit 
kindly.  Letters  from  Lord  Scudamore,  the  am- 
bassador, carried  him  through  France ;  and  passing 
through  Genoa,  Leghorn,  and  Pisa,  he  came  to  Florence, 
where  he  stayed  two  months.  "  There  immediately," 
he  says,  "  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  many  noble 
and  learned  men  whose  private  academies1  also  (which 
are  an  institution  there  of  most  praiseworthy  effect, 

1  Clubs  of  dilettanti, 


30  MILTON.  [chap. 

both  for  the  cultivation  of  polite  letters  and  the 
keeping  up  of  friendships)  I  assiduously  attended. 
The  memory  of  you,  Jacobo  Gaddi,  of  you,  Carlo 
Dati,  Frescobaldi,  Coltellini,  Bonmattei,  Chimentelli, 
Francini,  and  of  many  others,  always  delightful  and 
pleasant  as  it  is  to  me,  time  shall  never  destroy." 
He  had  a  happy  time,  interchanging  literary  work 
with  his  new  friends,  and  awakening  their  wonder  at* 
his  powers.  An  ode  and  a  letter  written  in  his  praise 
by  Francini  and  Dati,  testify  not  only  to  their  admi- 
ration of  his  culture  but  of  his  lofty  morality.  Nor 
was  this  praise  earned  by  any  reticence  on  his  religious 
views.  "With  singular  politeness,"  he  says,  "  they 
conceded  me  full  liberty  of  speech  on  this  delicate 
subject/'  a  liberty,  he  allows  us  to  understand  in  the 
Areopagitica,  of  which  they  themselves  regretted  their 
want.  The  well-known  lines  in  the  Paradise  Lost 
suggest  to  us  that  he  visited  Vallombrosa,  and  we 
know  that  he  saw  Galileo  at  Arcetri,  and  may  have 
looked  at  the  moon  with  him  as  he  pictures  the 
Tuscan  artist  doing 

"  At  evening,  from  the  top  of  Fesole, 
Or  in  Valdarno,  to  descry  new  lands, 
Rivers  and  mountains,  in  her  spotty  globe." 

Florence  drove  its  enchantment  into  his  heart ;  "  I 
eagerly  go,"  he  writes,  "for  a  feast  to  that  Dante  of 
yours,  and  to  Petrarca,  and  a  good  few  more,  nor  has 
Athens  itself  with  its  pellucid  Ilissus,  nor  old  Rome 
with  its  banks  of  Tiber,  been  able  to  hold  me,  but  that 
I  love  to  visit  your  Arno  and  these  hills  of  Faesule." 
This  was  written  on  September  10,  and  we  find 
him  next  at  Rome,  "  where  the  antiquity  and 
ancient  renown  of  the  city  detained  him  nearly  three 
months."  At  Rome,  as  at  Florence,  cultivated  society 
was  organised  into  academies,  and  Milton  was  received 
gladly  into  their  circle.  Lucas  Holstenius,  the  German 
librarian  of  the  Vatican,  took  care  to  mention  him 
to  the  Barberini,  and  at  the  cardinal's  palace  he  may 
have  first  heard  Leonora  Baroni,  the  greatest  singer 
of  the  time.     Three  Latin  epigrams  addressed  to  her 


J  J  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  31 

record  his  delight  with  her  voice.  As  at  Florence,  so 
here,  men  wrote  verses  in  his  praise,  and  to  one  of 
them,  Salsillus,  Milton  sent  a  Latin  poem  in  which 
he  speaks  of  his  own  land  where  the  worst  of  all  the 
winds  blows,  and  of  the  beauty  of  the  oaks  of  Faunus, 
of  the  grove  of  Egeria  and  the  swollen  Tiber — names 
which  seem  to  prove  that  he  had  wandered  over  the 
Campagna.  Thence  he  went  to  Naples,  where  he 
spent  two  months.  Manso  received  him,  the  friend 
of  Tasso  and  Marini,  in  whose  house  the  Gerusaleimne 
Conquistata  had  been  finished ; 

"  Fra  cavalier  magnanimi  e  cortesi 
Risplende  il  Manso." 

"This  nobleman  honoured  the  author,  during  his 
stay  in  Naples,  with  every  kindness  in  his  power,  and 
conferred  on  him  many  acts  of  courtesy.  To  him,  there- 
fore, his  guest,  to  show  himself  not  ungrateful,  sent 
the  following  piece  of  verse."  This  was  the  epistle 
to  Manso,  in  Latin  hexameters,  afterwards  published 
in  1645.  One  passage  in  it  is  of  importance,  in  which 
he  prays  that  he  may  have  such  a  friend,  "  if  perchance 
I  shall  ever  call  back  into  verse  our  native  Kings,  and 
Arthur  stirring  wars  even  under  the  earth  that  hides 
him,  or  speak  of  the  great-souled  heroes,  the  Knights 
of  the  unconquered  Table."  Already  he  was  medi- 
tating an  epic,  and  this  was  its  subject.  He  recurs  to 
his  early  love  of  it  in  his  later  days.  {Par.  Lost,  I.  580.) 
But  while  he  lived  this  rich  and  social  life,  Scotland 
had  openly  rebelled,  and  the  discontents  in  England 
rather  increased  than  lessened.  The  fame  of  these 
things  reached  him  as  he  was  thinking  of  journeying 
to  Sicily  and  Greece,  and  he  broke  up  his  stay  abroad. 
"  The  sad  news  of  civil  war  coming  from  England, 
called  me  back,  for  I  thought  it  disgraceful,  while  my 
fellow-countrymen  were  fighting  for  liberty,  that  I 
should  be  travelling  abroad  for  pleasure."  So  he 
started  for  home,  lingering  four  months  more  at 
Rome  and  Florence ;  seeing  Lucca,  and  travelling 
to  Venice  through  Bologna  and  Ferrara.  Through 
3 


32  MILTON.  [chap. 

the  whole  time,  though  warned  of  danger  lying 
in  wait  for  him  at  Rome,  he  spoke  boldly  of  his 
religious  opinions,  but  without  obtrusiveness.  "  I  had 
made  this  resolution,  not  of  my  own  accord  to  intro- 
duce conversation  about  religion,  but  if  asked  respecting 
the  faith,  then  whatsoever  I  should  suffer,  to  dissemble 
nothing."  And  at  Rome  whenever  it  was  attacked,  he 
defended  his  religion  most  freely.  With  this  tour  are 
connected  his  five  Italian  sonnets  and  one  canzone, 
written  as  I  think  Masson  renders  probable — the  first 
as  compliment  to  some  Bolognese  lady,  the  rest  to 
some  foreign  lady  with  whom  he  fell  much  in  love  : 
they  bear  the  stamp  of  a  real,  but  a  passing  passion. 
After  a  month  at  Venice,  whence  he  shipped  the  books 
and  music  he  had  collected,  he  came  home  swiftly, 
lingering  only  a  week  at  Geneva,  where  he  was  daily 
in  the  society  of  John  Diodati,  the  Professor  of  Theo- 
logy, and  the  uncle  of  his  friend  Charles  who  had  but 
lately  died.  We  know  the  exact  date  of  his  sojourn 
at  Geneva,  for  being  asked  by  the  Cerdogni  family  to 
write  something  in  their  album,  he  wrote  the  last  lines 
of  Comus — 

"  If  Virtue  feeble  were, 

Heaven  itself  would  stoop  to  her." 

*'  Caelum,  non  animum,  muto,  dum  trans  mare  curro." 

Junii  10,  1639,  Joannes  Miltonus,  Anglus. 

Early  in  August  we  find  him  in  England,  and  this  is 
his  own  witness  to  the  life  he  lived  abroad. 

"  I  again  take  God  to  witness  that  in  all  those  places 
where  so  many  things  are  considered  lawful,  I  lived 
sound  and  untouched  from  all  profligacy  and  vice, 
having  this  thought  perpetually  before  me,  that  though 
I  might  escape  the  eyes  of  men,  I  certainly  could  not 
the  eyes  of  God."  1 

Return  to  England. -The  King's  war  with  the 
Scots,  commonly  called  the  first  Bishop's  war,  was  just 
over  in  July,  1639,  when  Milton  returned  to  England, 
and  though  public  affairs  were  full    of  interest,  his 

1  Def.  Secunda. 


i.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  33 

private  grief  for  the  death  of  his  oldest  and  best 
loved  friend,  Charles  Diodati,  weighed  most  heavily 
on  his  heart.  It  was  not  long  before  he  "  deplored 
himself  and  his  solitary  condition,"  in  his  Latin  elegy 
on  the  death  of  Damon.  It  is  written  in  hexameters, 
and  is  an  absolute  pastoral,  deliberately  and  minutely 
worked  after  the  manner  of  the  Sicilian  poets,  the 
nymphs  of  whose  river,  Himera,  he  invokes  at  the 
beginning  to  "  tell  this  later  Sicilian  story."  Masson's 
translation  of  it  is  admirably  done,  and  he  justly  claims 
to  have  been  the  first  to  bring  out  its  biographical 
interest.  In  spite  of  the  conventional  form,  the  strong 
and  almost  impassioned  grief  of  Milton  for  his  friend 
fills  the  whole  poem.  What  faithful  companion,  he  asks, 

"  Now  will  cling  to  my  side  in  place  of  the  one  so  familiar, 

****** 

Who  will  bring  me  again  thy  blandishing  ways  and  thy  laughter, 
All  thy  Athenian  jests,  and  all  the  fine  wit  of  thy  fancies  ? 

****** 

Scarcely  does  any  discover  his  one  true  mate  among  thousands, 
Or,  if  a  kindlier  chance  shall  have  given  the  singular  blessing, 
Comes  a  dark  day  on  the  creep,  and  comes  the  hour  unexpected, 
Snatching  away  the  gift  and  leaving  the  anguish  eternal."1 

But  the  deeper  interest  of  the  poem  lies  in  its  revela- 
tion of  Milton's  sustained  purpose  to  write  a  heroic 
poem.  We  have  seen  that  he  was  projecting  in  Italy, 
stirred  thereto  by  his  Italian  friends,  "  to  leave  some- 
thing behind  him  so  written  to  after  times  as  that  they 
should  not  willingly  let  it  die."  He  alludes  to  the  sub- 
ject in  his  mind — a  song  of  the  Kings  of  our  Island, 
Arthur  and  the  Round  Table,  in  his  poem  to  Manso. 
In  this  elegy  he  seems  to  have  decided  on  the  theme 
and  to  have  begun  it.    I  quote  Masson's  translation — 

"  I  too — for  strangely  my  pipe  for  some  time  past  had  been 
sounding 
Strains  of  an  unknown  strength — 


1  Masson's  translation,  Miltoris  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  85.  Those 
who  wish  to  read  a  translation  of  the  Elegies  had  better  look 
for  them  in  Cowper's  poems.  They  are  not  accurate  trans- 
lations, but  they  are  those  of  a  poet, 


34  MILTON.  [chap. 

I  have  a  theme  of  the  Trojans  cruising  our  southern  headlands 
Shaping   to  song,    and   the   realm   of   Imogen,  daughter   of 

Pandras, 
Brennus   and    Arvirach,    dukes,    and    Bren's   bold    brother, 

Belinus, 
Then  the  Armorican  settlers  under  the  laws  of  the  Britons, 
Ay,  and  the  womb  of  Igraine  fatally  pregnant  with  Arthur, 
Uther's  son." 

Then  he  looks  forward  to  hanging  aside,  forgotten, 
his  Latin  pipe,  and  exchanging  it  for  an  English 
one,  content — 

"  If  but  yellow-haired  Ouse  shall  read  me,  the  drinker  of  Alan, 
Humber  which  whirls  as  it  flows,  and  Trent's  whole  valley  of 

orchards. 
Thames,  my  own  Thames,  above  all,  and  Tamar's  western 

waters 
Tawny  with  ores,  and  where  the  white  waves  swinge  the  far 

Orkneys. " 

Fame  urged  him  and  love  of  England.  The  great 
work  of  his  genius  was  to  be  written  in  the  tongue 
that  his  countrymen  could  read. 

The  first  sketch  of  Paradise  Lost  began  the 
fulfilment  of  this  desire.  It  was  made  in  London, 
where  he  now  took  a  lodging  in  St.  Bride's  Church- 
yard, and  found  work  to  do  in  the  education  of 
his  two  nephews,  Mrs.  Agar's  sons  by  her  first 
marriage.  Here,  during  the  winter  of  1639-40, 
we  have  proof,  from  his  jottings  in  a  MS.  now  at 
Cambridge,  of  the  manner  in  which  he  employed 
himself.  He  was  searching  for  a  subject  for  a  great 
poem.  He  seems  soon  to  have  given  up  the  British 
theme,  and  to  have  tended  towards  a  Scriptural  one. 
He  filled  the  seven  pages  of  the  MS.  in  question 
with  subjects  and  detailed  sketches  of  the  form  of 
subjects,  sixty-one  of  which  are  Scriptural  and  thirty- 
eight  from  British  history.  Most  of  them,  when  they 
are  at  all  expanded,  are  in  the  dramatic  form ;  but  the 
epic  and  the  pastoral  are  now  and  then  suggested. 
The  most  remarkable  thing  in  the  list  is  that  in  the 
years  1640 — 42,  more  than  twenty  years  before  the 
work  was  done,  the  subject  of  Paradise  Lost  was 


i.]  EARLY  LIFE  OF  MILTON.  35 

conceived.  There  are  four  drafts  for  it,  three  of 
them  standing  together  as  the  first  in  the  list,  the 
fourth  jotted  down  some  time  afterwards.  They  are 
all  in  the  dramatic  form,  and  we  know  from  Aubrey 
and  Philips  that  the  invocation  of  Satan  to  the  Sun, 
in  the  Paradise  Lost,  book  iv.  32-41,  was  written 
about  1642,  and  intended  as  the  beginning  of  the 
drama.  In  the  quiet  of  his  lodging,  these  were  his 
purposes,  and,  were  it  not  that  his  country  and  the 
great  cause  of  liberty  called  him  forth,  we  might 
regret  that  so  much  was  lost  to  literature,  that  now  for 
twenty  years  the  magnificent  voice  of  Milton's  song 
was  hushed.  It  may  be  that  Paradise  Lost  was 
grander  from  the  long  experience  of  a  great  political 
crisis,  but  the  lighter  and  more  youthful  touch  and 
tone  of  the  Allegro  and  Pense/vso,  and  the  artful  beauty 
of  Lycidas  never,  and  could  not  ever,  reappear.  He 
felt  the  surrender  of  his  hopes  very  deeply ;  he  bound 
himself  never  wholly  to  surrender  them,  as  long  as 
he  lived.  While  the  times  of  chiding  lasted  he 
would  cherish  them,  and  when  the  noises  ceased, 
fulfil  them  ;  but  not  how.  There  was  other  work 
more  needful;  and  in  1641,  in  his  Reason  of  Church 
Government,  he  told  the  world  of  his  thoughts  of  a 
great  English  poem,  of  his  present  necessity  to  give 
up  the  doing  of  it,  and  of  his  resolve  to  do  it,  in 
words  full  of  a  noble  pathos. 

"  Neither  do  I  think  to  covenant  with  any  knowing 
reader  that  for  some  few  years  yet  I  may  go  on  trust 
with  him  toward  the  payment  of  what  I  am  now 
indebted,  as  being  a  work  not  to  be  raised  from  the 
heat  of  youth,  or  the  vapour  of  wine  .  .  .  nor  to  be 
obtained  by  the  invocation  of  Dame  Memory  and  her 
Siren  daughters,  but  by  devout  prayer  to  the  Eternal 
Spirit  who  can  enrich  with  all  utterance  and  all  know- 
ledge, and  sends  out  his  Seraphim  with  the  hallowed 
fire  of  his  altar  to  touch  and  purify  the  lips  of  whom 
he  pleases.  To  this  must  be  added  industrious  and 
select  reading,  steady  observation,  insight  into  all 
seemly  and  generous  arts  and  affairs. " 


36  MILTON,  [chap. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE   PROSE   WORKS. 

It  was  a  longer  time  than  he  thought  before  Milton 
could  soar  again,  with  his  singing  robes  about  him. 
Already  the  Long  Parliament  was  sitting  when  he 
moved  from  St.  Bride's  Churchyard  to  Aldersgate 
Street,  and  the  strenuous  work  of  that  Parliament, 
the  measures  it  took  for  discipline  in  the  Church, 
measures  which  in  Milton's  mind  prophesied  a  reform 
in  the  manners  and  institutions  of  the  Common- 
wealth, roused  him  to  political  action  in  behalf  of  his 
country.  "  I  resolved/'  he  says  {Defensio  Secunda), 
"  though  I  was  then  meditating  other  matters,  to 
transfer  into  this  struggle  all  my  genius  and  all  the 
strength  of  my  industry/'  The  Prose  Works  are 
dedicated  to  Liberty,  and  Milton  in  his  Defensio 
Secunda  divides  them  for  us.  He  believed  there  were 
three  species  of  liberty  essential  to  the  happiness  of 
social  life, — religious,  domestic,  and  civil  liberty. 
The  five  pamphlets  we  shall  presently  describe  con- 
cerned the  first.  Under  the  head  of  domestic  liberty  he 
ranks  three  questions — the  conditions  of  the  conjugal 
tie,  and  to  this  belong  his  four  tracts  on  divorce ;  the 
education  of  youth,  discussed  in  the  short  treatise 
to  Samuel  Hartlib ;  the  free  publication  of  thoughts, 
and  this  is  treated  in  the  Areopagitica.  We  may  our- 
selves rank  the  two  Defences  of  the  People  of  England 
and  the  Eikonoclastes  and  the  other  treatises  of  that 
time  as  belonging  to  the  discussion  of  civil  liberty; 
while  the  pamphlets  after  Cromwell's  death  equally  cry 
out  for  and  defend  religious  and  civil  liberty.  Lastly, 
the  treatise  on  Christian  Doctrine  is  in  fact  one  long 
demand  for  liberty  of  theological  thought. 

It  was  a  warfare  then  in  which  Milton  engaged,  and 
he  fought  the  battle  with  all  his  intellectual  and  moral 


ii.]  THE   PROSE   WORKS.  37 

power.  And  he  fought  always  in  the  van,  until,  as  the 
literary  champion  of  the  Commonwealth,  his  name 
became  known,  side  by  side  with  Cromwell's,  over 
Europe.  In  the  course  of  the  warfare  he  passed  from 
Presbyterianism  to  Independency.  In  it  he  linked 
himself  closely  to  Cromwell,  but  not  so  blindly  as  not 
to  first  warn  him  against  becoming  faithless  to  liberty, 
and  afterwards  to  look  back  with  dispraise  upon  a 
Government  which  had  at  least  tended  to  a  tyranny. 
There  was  no  one  else  in  England  to  do  this  work  for 
liberty,  and  Milton  felt  himself  forced  into  it ;  and  if 
it  was  not  always  done  in  a  manner  we  should  wish, 
we  ought  to  remember  that  Milton  was  out  of  his 
true  province  in  it,  and  that  the  sacrifice  he  made  of 
his  Poetry  may  have  tended  to  embitter  his  Prose. 

The  Pamphlets  on  Episcopacy  and  Church 
Reform   introduce    Milton's    prose    works   and   his 
life  for  twenty  years.      The  first  pamphlet  was  entitled, 
Of  Reformation  touching  Church  Discipline  in  Efigland 
and  the  Causes  that  hitherto  have  hindered  it,   1641. 
It  grew  up  out  of  the  war  of  pamphlets  that  arose  on 
the  presentation  of  the  petition  against   Episcopacy, 
and  out  of  the  debates  on  Church  Reform  in  the  Par- 
liament.    Bishop  Hall's  Humble  Remonstrance  against 
the   Petition   was    met    by   an    answer,    written    by 
Smectymnuus,  the  title  formed  by  the  initials  of  the 
writers,  Stephen  Marshall,  Edmund  Calamy,  Thomas 
Young,   Matthew  Newcomen,  and  William  Spurston. 
Archbishop  Usher  then  took  up  the  ball  on  the  side  of 
a  modified  episcopacy,  and  the  contest,  thus  carried  on 
without,  was  supported  within  the  Houses  by  the  High 
Church  Party  who  wished  to  retain  episcopacy  as  it 
was ;  by  the  Root  and  Branch  Party  who  wished  to 
destroy  it ;  and  by  the   Reforming  Party  who  wished 
to  purify  it  from  all  its   evils.     The  course  of   the 
contest  was  interrupted  by  the  trial  and  execution  of 
Strafford,  and  it  was  shortly  after  his  death,  probably 
in   the    beginning   of  June,  that    Milton's   pamphlet 
appeared,  taking,  with  sarcastic  fierceness,  the  side 
of  the  Root  and  Branch  party.     It  inquires  why  the 


38  MILTON*  [chap. 

Reformation  was  arrested  in  England  ?  It  was  arrested, 
he  answers,  by  three  sets  of  persons,  the  Antiquitarians, 
who  defend  prelacy  because  it  is  ancient  and  sacred  ; 
the  Libertines,  who  defend  it  because  it  least  troubles 
their  licence  ;  the  Politicians,  who,  unworthy  of  the 
name,  defend  it  for  its  consistency  with  monarchy. 
All  that  has  ever  been  spoilt  of  political  and  religious 
reform  has  been  spoilt,  he  says,  because  "  The 
Bishop's  foot  has  been  in  it,"  and  he  ends  with 
a  magnificent  outburst  of  poetic  prayer  that  the 
Omnipotent  King  may  deliver  England  from  the  wild 
boars  that  have  broken  into  His  vineyard. 

The  second  pamphlet,  in  answer  to  Usher's,  and 
entitled,  On  Prelatical  Episcopacy,  appeared  almost 
immediately  after  the  first,  and  through  twenty-four 
pages  Milton  mocked  in  it  the  Antiquitarian  view  of 
episcopacy.  The  third  pamphlet  instantly  followed. 
It  replied  to  Bishop  Hall's  Defence  of  his  Humble 
Remojistrance,  and  its  title  tells  the  tale  of  its  contents 
— Ani??tadversions  upon  the  Remonstrants'  Defence 
against  Smectymnuus,  1641.  It  comments  step  by 
step  on  Hall's  work,  and  is  both  tiresome,  and  as 
coarse  as  Swift  in  his  coarse  mood ;  nor  is  the  coarse- 
ness redeemed  by  Swift's  incisiveness.  A  few  passages 
of  great  nobility  succour  the  weary  reader,  but  only 
make  him  the  more  regret  that  Milton  should  have 
fallen  into  so  much  brutality.  It  was  not  till  after  the 
Grand  Remonstrance  in  November  and  December, 
1 64 1,  and  the  attempt  to  arrest  the  Five  Members  in 
the  following  January,  and  perhaps  after  the  Bill  for 
excluding  Bishops  from  Parliament  had  passed  in 
February,  that  Milton  again  appeared  in  the  lists. 
The  fourth  pamphlet  was  published  under  his  own 
name,  the  three  previous  ones  being  anonymous,  and 
was  called,  The  Reason  of  Church-government  urged 
against  Prelaty.  Having  argued  on  the  origin  and 
nature  of  true  Church-government,  and  that  Prelaty 
does  not  contain  or  perform  it,  he  proceeds  in  the 
second  book  to  show  that  Prelaty  opposeth  the  reason 
and  end  of  the  Gospel — in  its  outward  form  of  eternal 


II.]  THE   PROSE   WORKS.  39 

pomp — in  its  ceremonies  which  deform  the  truth — -in 
its  jurisdiction  which  connects  a  spiritual  body  with 
the  state.  The  treatise  then  ends  with  a  chapter  on 
the  mischief  that  Prelaty  does  in  the  state.  Our  first 
interest  in  the  pamphlet  is,  that  it  proves  that  Milton 
more  than  tended  at  this  time  to  the  system  of  Church- 
government  laid  down  by  the  Presbyterians.  Our 
second  interest  is,  that  having  put  his  name  to  the 
pamphlet,  he  thought  himself  bound  to  say  something 
about  himself,  and  the  preface  to  the  second  book 
contains  a  sketch,  parts  of  which  have  been  quoted, 
of  his  life,  and  his  work,  and  his  aims,  and  his  reasons 
for  leaving  poetry  for  prose,  reasons  which  all  who 
care  for  liberty  in  religion  and  in  political  life  sym- 
pathise with  and  honour.  "  For  me,  I  have  determined 
to  lay  up  as  the  best  treasure  and  solace  of  a  good 
old  age,  if  God  vouchsafe  it  to  me,  the  honest  liberty 
of  free  speech  from  my  youth  where  I  shall  think  it 
available  in  so  dear  a  concernment  as  the  Church's 
good."  It  was  for  this  high  end  that  he  left  his  literary 
calm  to  use  a  manner  of  writing  in  which  he  had 
"  but  the  use  of  his  left  hand,"  and  embarked  "  in  a 
troubled  sea  of  noises  and  hoarse  disputes."  It 
seemed  to  his  indignant  heart  that  the  writing  of 
poetry  was  impossible  until  the  land  "  had  once  enfran- 
chised herself  from  this  impertinent  yoke  of  Prelaty 
under  whose  inquisitorious  and  tyrannical  duncery  no 
free  and  splendid  wit  could  flourish." 

The  fifth  pamphlet  was  called  forth  by  Bishop  Hall's 
scurrilous  answer  to  the  Animadversions.  The  Bishop 
did  not  hesitate  to  describe  Milton  as  likely  to  have 
spent  his  youth  in  loitering,  bezzling,  and  harloting, 
and  to  have  been  vomited  out  from  the  university 
into  a  suburb  sink  in  London.  "  Where  his  morning 
haunts  are,  I  wist  not,  but  he  who  would  find  him 
after  dinner  must  search  the  playhouses  and  the 
bordelli,  for  there  I  have  traced  him."  Milton's  reply 
was  entitled — An  Apology  against  a  Pamphlet  calld 
A  Modest  Confutation  of  the  Animadversions  of  the 
Remojistr ant  against  Smectymnuus,  1642.     It  was  not 


40  MILTON.  [chap. 

signed,  but  it  needed  no  signature.  It  was  Milton's 
defence  against  the  attacks  on  his  character,  it  reite- 
rated with  ferocious  scorn  the  attack  on  Hall,  and  it 
entered  afresh  into  the  Church  question.  The  per- 
sonal part  has  a  deep  interest,  and  in  it  he  assembles 
the  history  of  his  studies,  as  already  partly  quoted, 
and  the  principles  which  swayed  his  youth — purity, 
chivalry,  devotion  to  the  noblest  books  and  characters 
— the  principles  of  the  Lady's  answer  to  Comas.  It  is  a 
beautiful  passage,  and  one  of  the  few  in  which  Milton's 
style  and  thought  in  prose  reaches  simple  excellence. 

The  Civil  War. — This  fifth  pamphlet  of  Milton 
was  probably  published  in  March  1642.  During  the 
following  months,  the  King  being  at  York  and  the 
Parliament  at  Westminster,  the  country  was  rapidly 
gliding  into  civil  war.  On  the  9th  of  August,  the  King 
issued  his  proclamation  for  the  suppression  "  of  the 
present  rebellion  under  the  command  of  Robert,  Earl 
of  Essex."  On  the  nth  the  Commons  of  England 
rose  one  by  one  each  in  his  place,  and  answered 
the  proclamation  by  swearing  to  stand  by  Essex  with 
their  lives  and  fortunes  to  the  end ;  and  on  the 
22nd,  on  the  evening  of  a  very  stormy  and  tempestuous 
day,  Sir  Edmund  Verney  raised  the  royal  standard 
at  Nottingham  Castle,  and  the  Civil  War  began.  The 
battle  of  Edgehill  followed  in  October.  In  November 
the  King  advanced  to  Brentford,  seven  miles  from 
London ;  and  all  London,  dreading  spoliation,  sent 
out  its  trainbands  to  support  Essex  and  drive  the  King 
back.  It  was  then  that  Milton  wrote  his  sonnet, 
Whe?i  the  assaull  was  intended  to  the  City.  It  is  de- 
lightful to  meet,  in  the  very  midst  of  his  controversial 
pamphlets,  with  this  classic  verse,  sweet  as  melody 
and  art  can  make  it,  equally  tempered  with  beauty 
and  severity. 

Milton's  First  Marriage. —  Not  long  after, 
about  Whitsuntide,  1643,  Milton  journeyed  to  the 
country  and  returned  "a  married  man  that  went 
out  a  bachelor,  his  wife  being  Mary,  the  eldest 
daughter  of  Mr.  Richard  Powell,  Justice  of  Peace,  of 


ii.]  THE  PROSE   WORKS.  4* 

Forest  Hill  near  Shotover,  in  Oxfordshire."  No  one 
knows  how  the  marriage  came  to  pass.  The  only 
connection  traceable  between  the  families,  independent 
of  the  fact  that  the  Miltons  and  Powells  were  both 
Shotover  people,  is  that  in  1627  Richard  Powell 
acknowledged  a  debt  to  Milton  of  500/.,  and  Milton 
may  have  visited  them  as  a  friend  who  did  not 
press  his  debt.  There  was  no  community  of  feeling, 
for  the  Powells  were  Royalists.  It  was  dangerous 
for  Milton  to  go  near  Oxford,  where  the  King  held 
his  court ;  and  yet,  in  spite  of  all  this,  he  stayed  a 
month  in  the  house.  He  was  thirty-five  years  old, 
Mary  Powell  was  seventeen  ;  yet  he  married  her. 
It  was  not  a  lucky  beginning  and  it  ended  ill.  When 
she  came  to  live  with  her  husband,  she  found  it 
very  solitary;  no  company  came  to  her;  oftentimes 
she  heard  his  nephews  beaten  and  cry,  and  the  life 
was  irksome  to  her.  A  month  had  scarcely  passed 
when  her  friends,  "  possibly  incited  by  her  own  desire," 
wished  her  to  go  back  for  the  rest  of  the  summer.  It 
is  not  the  least  strange  part  of  this  strange  business 
that  Milton  consented,  with  the  understanding  how- 
ever that  she  should  return  at  Michaelmas.  Meanwhile 
his  father  came  to  live  with  him. 

The  Four  Divorce  Tracts  of  Milton  group 
themselves  round  this  curious  story.  Masson  seems 
to  have  proved,  if  Phillips'  date  of  the  marriage  is 
right,  and  it  is  the  strangest  part  of  the  story,  that 
Milton  actually  wrote  the  first  of  these  tracts — the 
Doctrine  of  Discipline  and  Divorce — while  his  wife  was 
still  with  him.  If  so,  he  must  have  fiercely  repented 
his  marriage  before  the  honeymoon  was  over.  At  any 
rate,  two  months  before  the  time  fixed  for  her  return,  on 
August  1  st,  1643,  the  first  edition  was  published.  And 
it  contained  enough  to  disperse  any  wonder  aftertimes 
might  have  at  his  wife's  refusal  to  return,  for  not  only 
was  its  thesis  this — That  indisposition,  unfitness,  or 
contrariety  of  mind  is  a  greater  reason  of  divorce 
than  any  other  reason — but  also  it  was  loaded  with 
expressions  which  paint  in  the  bitterest  way  the  horrors 


42  MILTON.  [chap. 

of  a  man  burdened  with  an  uncongenial  wife,  ex- 
pressions which  his  wife  would  naturally  take  to  her- 
self, and  which  Milton  drew,  it  seems,  from  his  own 
experience.  Dwelling  on  this  view,  he  came  to  think  it 
not  only  applicable  to  his  own  case,  but  to  the  man's 
slavery  in  an  unfit  marriage  over  the  whole  world  :  and 
he  resolved  to  make  it  a  part  of  his  struggle  for  freedom, 
to  set  men  at  liberty  from  the  tyranny  of  an  indis- 
soluble marriage  bond.  He  may  have  been  spurred  to 
this  by  his  wife's  refusal  to  return  at  Michaelmas;  at 
any  rate,  on  February  2nd,  1644,  in  answer  to  the 
abuse  and  criticism  that  fell  on  him  from  all  sides,  he 
put  forth  a  second  edition,  much  enlarged,  of  his 
Tract,  signed  with  his  name,  and  headed  by  a  bold 
address  to  the  Parliament.  It  is  a  fresh  instance  of 
the  daring  of  Milton  ;  no  man  had  ever  more  the 
courage  of  his  opinions.  The  re-edited  tract  filled 
men's  minds,  and  he  was  soon  placed  as  a  "  Divorcer" 
among  the  tribes  of  sectaries  which  the  restrictions  of 
the  Presbyterian  party,  speaking  from  the  Westminster 
Assembly  and  the  Parliament,  had  multiplied  and 
remultiplied  in  England.  Opposition  only  inflamed 
Milton,  and  in  July  appeared  his  second  Divorce 
Tract,  entitled  the  Judgment  of  Martin  Bncer  con- 
cerning Divorce,  in  which  he  deliberately  challenged 
the  Assembly;  followed  on  March  4th,  1645,  by  two 
more,  the  Tetrachordon,  or  expositions  upon  the  four 
chief  places  in  Scripture  which  treat  of  marriage,  and 
Colastcrion,  a  punishing  reply  to  his  assailants.  Two 
sonnets,  in  which  he  mocked  his  adversaries,  closed 
the  controversy. 

The  Education  Tract. — While  the  divorce 
pamphlets  were  being  written  Milton  engaged  in  two 
other  subjects  pertaining  to  liberty, — Education,  and 
the  liberty  of  expressing  Thoughts.  He  was  living 
quietly  in  his  garden-house,  and  he  took  pupils  and 
tried  on  them  his  system  of  education;  and  out  of 
this  experience,  and  out  of  long  talks  with  a  new 
friend,  Samuel  Hartlib,  a  German  who  was  pushing 
Comenius'  method  of  teaching  in  London,  grew  his 


II.]  THE   PROSE   WORKS.  43 

little  tract  on  Education.  (June,  1644.)  It  is  well 
worth  reading ;  it  is  short,  clear,  and  eloquent.  A 
whole  scheme  for  a  complete  and  generous  education — 
"  that  which  fits  a  man  to  perform  justly,  skilfully,  and 
magnanimously  all  the  offices,  both  private  and  pub- 
lic, of  peace  and  war,"  is  drawn  forth.  It  attacks  the 
methods  of  the  Universities,  and  lays  down  its  own 
method.  Not  only  studies  and  arts  are  prescribed,  but 
knowledge  of  agriculture,  of  warlike  and  physical 
science  and  medicine,  of  theology  and  poetry ;  and,  in 
the  latter,  "of  what  decorum  is,  which  is  the  grand 
masterpiece  to  observe  " — of  martial  exercises,  and  of 
music.  Journeys  also  are  insisted  on,  that  the  youths 
may  gain  practical  knowledge  of  their  own  land  and  of 
foreign  states,  and  learn  to  enjoy  the  beauty  of  the 
world.  These  things  rightly  taught  in  academies  built 
for  the  purpose  over  England  "  might  in  a  short  time 
gain  them  to  an  incredible  diligence  and  courage, 
infusing  into  their  young  breasts  such  an  ingenuous 
and  noble  ardour  as  could  not  fail  to  make  many 
of  them  renowned  and  matchless  men."  It  is  plain, 
however,  that  the  system  would  do  for  none  but 
youths  of  leisure  and  fortune,  and  is  directed  towards 
the  creation  of  accomplished  senators,  judges,  generals, 
and  artists — in  fact,  towards  the  formation  of  a  highly 
cultured  class.  It  goes  with  the  Miltonic  feeling  of 
the  necessity  of  the  mere  mob  of  men  being  governed 
by  the  best. 

The  Areopagitica. — In  the  midst  also  of  the 
divorce  controversy,  and  arising  out  of  it,  another 
struggle  for  liberty  engaged  Milton  :  the  liberty  of 
unlicensed  printing.  Printing  in  England  had  long 
been  subjected  to  the  censorship  of  delegates  ap- 
pointed by  the  state.  All  publications  had  to  be 
licensed.  Of  late  the  censorship  had  fallen  into 
desuetude,  and  only  thirty-five  publications  were 
registered  in  the  beginning  of  1643.  In  June  a  strict 
ordinance  of  printing  was  passed,  and  ^^^  publications 
were  registered  in  the  latter  half  of  the  same  year. 
The  press  was  brought  under  the  strict  control  of  a 


44  MILTON.  [chap. 

set  of  Presbyterian  censors.  Milton  had  despised  the 
ordinance  and  published  his  first  Divorce  Tract  and 
the  second  edition  of  it  without  a  licence.  When  the 
second  tract  appeared  (it  was  licensed)  in  July  1644, 
the  Assembly  answered  its  challenge  by  denouncing 
it  to  Parliament.  Mr.  Herbert  Palmer  preached 
against  it  in  St.  Margaret's  Westminster,  as  a  book 
fit  to  be  burned,  and  the  Stationers'  Company,  jealous 
for  their  book  trade,  which  the  unregistered  publica- 
tions interfered  with,  petitioned  Parliament  against 
them,  and  seizing  the  opportunity,  instanced  Milton's 
first  tract  as  one  of  those  blasphemous  and  evil  pro- 
ductions which  the  slackness  of  the  law  allowed  to 
get  loose.  A  committee  on  printing  was  appointed, 
and  Milton's  pamphlet  was  mentioned  as  one  whose 
author  was  to  be  inquired  for.  The  matter  was  not 
carried  out,  but  Milton's  mind  was  turned  to  the  whole 
subject,  and,  "  On  the  subject  of  the  liberation  of  the 
press,  so  that  the  judgment  of  the  true  and  the  false, 
what  should  be  published  and  what  suppressed,  should 
not  be  in  the  hands  of  a  few  men,  and  these  mostly 
unlearned  and  of  common  capacity,  erected  into  a 
"censorship  over  books — an  agency  through  which  no 
one  almost  can  or  will  send  into  the  light  anything 
that  is  above  the  vulgar  taste — on  this  subject,  in  the 
form  of  an  express  oration,  I  wrote  my  Areopagitica." 
It  was  published  November  24, 1644,  unlicensed  and  un- 
registered ;  being  an  address  to  Parliament  for  liberty 
to  publish  without  license  or  registering — a  prayer  to 
Parliament  to  repeal  their  law.  The  stationers  accused 
him  for  it  before  the  Lords,  but  the  matter  was  dropped 
and  the  company  baulked  of  its  vengeance. 

Milton's  Censorship. — This  is  the  best  place 
to  notice  the  strange  fact  that  during  the  whole  of 
the  year  1651  Milton  acted  as  Censor  of  the  Press. 
Masson  thinks  that  this  censorship  was  not  much 
more  than  a  supervision  of  the  Commonwealth's 
weekly  paper — The  Mercurius  Politicus.  But  it 
seems  to  have  been  more ;  for  he  was  examined  on 
the  question  of  having  licensed  the  Racovian  Cati- 


ii.]  THE   PROSE   WORKS.  45 

chism,  a  Socinian  work  which  was  condemned  by  the 
Parliament,  and  is  said  to  have  replied  that  he  saw  no 
reason  why  the  book  should  not  be  printed.  It 
would  appear  then  that  he  exercised  his  censorship  in 
a  tolerant  manner,  but  that  does  not  alter  the  strange- 
ness of  the  fact  that  he  exercised  it  at  all.  Nor  is 
his  friendship  for  Marchamont  Needham  or  his  asso- 
ciation with  him  much  to  his  credit.  Needham 
began  by  editing  the  Mercurins  Britannicus  on  the 
popular  side  and  then  the  Mercurius  Pragmaticus  for 
the  royalists,  and  then  again  turned  his  coat  and 
edited  the  Mercurius  Politicus  for  the  Common- 
wealth. It  was  this  man  who  became  "  a  great  crony  " 
of  Milton's,  and  to  him  and  Needham,  I  presume  for 
these  "press"  services,  Bradshaw  left  ten  pounds 
a  piece  in  his  will.  It  is  not  an  association  by  which 
Milton  is  honoured,  and  his  being  a  censor  at  all 
of  the  press  does  not  seem  quite  worthy  of  the 
writer  of  the  Areopagitica. 

All  who  care  for  English  literature  have  read  the 
Areopagitica.  It  is  the  most  literary  of  Milton's 
pamphlets,  eloquent,  to  the  point,  and  full  of  noble 
images  splendidly  wrought  and  fitted  to  their  place. 
Its  defence  of  books  and  the  freedom  of  books  will 
last  as  long  as  there  are  writers  and  readers  of  books. 
Its  scorn  of  the  censorship  of  writing  is  only  excelled 
by  its  uplifted  praise  of  true  writing.  It  calls  on  the 
Parliament  to  defend  books.  "  As  good  almost  kill 
a  man  as  kill  a  good  book."  The  censorship  which 
killed  so  many  was  a  Papal  invention  that  had  come 
into  England  ;  and  it  was  an  evil  invention.  The 
scholar  should  have  liberty  to  read  all  books,  bad  and 
good,  for  his  virtue  should  not  be  "fugitive  and 
cloistered,"  but  disciplined  by  the  trial  of  good  and 
evil  reading.  Nor  did  "  licensing  "  attain  its  end  ;  it 
did  not  stop  bad  books  ;  and  even  if  that  end  were  right 
— who  is  to  find  intelligent  and  just  licensers?  The 
miseries  of  the  true  author  at  the  hands  of  licensers 
are  then  described,  and  we  find  that  Milton's  voice 
was  the  voice  of  a  large  party.     Nevertheless  he  does 


46  MILTON.  [chap. 

not  tolerate  "  Popery  and  open  superstition,  or  evil 
against  faith  and  manners."  He  adds  saving  clauses 
to  his  principle.  But  the  whole  force  of  the  treatise 
is  on  the  side  of  liberty,  and  it  ends  with  a  fine  series 
of  passages  in  which  he  claims  liberty  of  conscience 
and  of  the  expression  of  opinion  for  all  the  various 
sects  and  schisms,  whose  varieties  prove,  not  the 
danger  and  overthrow,  but  the  strength,  and  zeal,  and 
life  of  the  religious  intelligence  of  England. 

Milton  wholly  ceases  to  be  Presbyterian. 
— "  It  cannot  be  guessed,"  he  says  in  the  Areopagitica, 
"what  is  intended  by  some  but  a  second  tyranny 
over  learning,  and  will  soon  put  it  out  of  controversy 
that  Bishops  and  Presbyters  are  the  same  to  us 
both  name  and  thing."  That  is  almost  the  same 
phrase  as  the  last  line  of  the  sonnet  On  the  Forcers 
of  Consciefice — 

"  New  Presbyter  is  but  old  Priest  writ  large." 

This  sonnet,  written  early  in  1646,  embodies 
Milton's  position  and  the  results  of  the  Areopagiticay 
a  little  more  than  a  year  after  its  publication.  He  was 
now  not  only  an  Independent,  but  one  of  Cromwell's 
type,  who  knew  no  "minister"  beyond  himself;  and 
not  only  an  Independent,  but  a  sectary,  "a  divorcer." 
The  Presbyterians  could  not  let  him  alone,  and  the 
Areopagitica  only  sharpened  their  venom.  A  Mr. 
Baillie,  in  his  Dissuasive,  Edwards  in  his  Gangrana, 
books  that  were  catalogues  of  the  sects  and  their 
evils,  attacked  him  by  name.  Milton,  who  never 
spared  his  adversaries,  and  met  them  with  tenfold  their 
own  fury,  wrote  his  sonnet,  and  wrought  into  it  closely 
and  fiercely  all  his  wrath.  The  Presbyterians  had  set 
up  "  a  classic  hierarchy  " — the  system  of  Presbyterian 
classes  to  force  men's  consciences — They  had  added  to 
their  livings — "  seized  the  widowed  whore  Plurality  " — 
"  A.  S."  Dr.  Adam  Stuart,  and  Rutherford,  men  who 
had  written  for  strict  Presbytery  against  the  Indepen- 
dents, are  bound  up  in  the  same  scorn  as  "  shallow 
Edwards  and  Scotch  what  d'ye  call "  (Baillie),  and  the 


II]  THE    PROSE    WORKS.  47 

line  "  Clip  your  phylacteries,  though  baulk  your  ears/' 
was  in  the  first  draught,  "  Crop  ye  as  close  as  marginal 
P(rynne's)  ears."  It  was  not  wise  to  meddle  with 
Milton,  and  his  sonnet  (con  coda,  with  a  scorpion  tail 
of  six  verses)  sets  him  on  the  side  of  the  New  Model 
in  the  army,  against  the  Scots,  and  against  the 
Assembly. 

Milton's  Home  Life,  early  in  1645,  had  mean- 
time changed.  To  carry  out  his  divorce  views,  his  wife 
now  being  away  nearly  two  years,  he  thought  of 
marrying  again.  He  had  had  the  society  of  women 
during  her  absence.  It  was  his  chief  diversion  in  the 
winter  of  1643,  44,  to  visit  the  Lady  Margaret  Ley, 
daughter  of  that  Earl  of  Marlborough  who  was  Lord 
High  Treasurer  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  ;  and  his  son- 
net to  her  records  his  admiration.  She  was  much 
older  than  Milton,  and  married :  but  a  lady  younger 
and  unmarried  engaged  at  the  same  time  his  thoughts, 
and  to  her  he  wrote  the  sonnet  entitled,  To  a  Virtuous 
Young  Lady.  It  is  conjectured  that  she  was  the  very 
Miss  Davis  whom  he  now,  in  1645,  had  a  design 
of  marrying.  The  news  came  to  Oxford,  where  the 
Powell  family  were  in  great  trouble,  and  where  the 
King's  cause  was  decaying.  Everything  urged  the 
Powells  to  bring  about  a  reconciliation  with  one  who 
could  help  them  seriously  in  the  crisis.  An  interview 
was  managed  in  a  friend's  house,  Milton's  wife  sud- 
denly appeared,  fell  on  her  knees,  and 

"  Her  lowly  plight 
Immovable  till  peace  obtained  from  fault 
Acknowledged  and  deplored,  in  Adam  wrought 
Commiseration. " 

A  few  weeks  after,  for  Milton  was  changing  his 
house  from  Aldersgate  to  Barbican,  his  wife  took  up 
her  life  again  with  him. 

Publication  of  Poems. — It  was  now,  in  a 
moment  of  quiet,  that  Milton  prepared  and  published 
the  first  collected  edition  of  his  poems,  January  2, 
1646.  Humphrey  Moseley,  an  enterprising  publisher, 
who,  almost  alone  among  his  brethren,  devoted  himself 

4 


48  MILTON.  [chat. 

to  putting  forth  books  of  general  culture,  was  his 
publisher.  The  English  Poems  came  first,  then  the 
Sonnets,  English  and  Italian,  then  the  Arcades,  Lycidas, 
and  Comus — and  after  a  break  in  the  paging,  the  Latin 
Poems — the  Elegiarum  Liber,  and  the  Sylvarum  Liber. 
Moseley,  whose  name  we  ought  to  remember  as  one 
who  when  the  age  was  overwhelmed  with  theological 
and  political  pamphlets  loved  good  literature  and  set 
it  forth,  himself  asked  Milton  for  the  MSS.;  and  in 
his  preface  wrote  with  honest  pride  of  his  work,  "  Let 
the  event  guide  itself  which  way  it  will,  I  shall  deserve 
of  the  age  by  bringing  into  the  light  as  true  a  birth  as 
the  Muses  have  brought  forth  since  our  famous  Spenser 
wrote,  whose  poems  in  these  English  ones  are  as  rarely 
imitated  as  sweetly  excelled."  It  is  pleasant  to  hear 
this  silver  note  of  the  love  of  pure  literature  among 
the  braying  of  the  controversial  trumpets,  as  pleasant 
as  it  must  have  been  for  many  to  read,  in  quiet 
leisure,  poems  that  seemed  to  come  out  of  a  world 
above  the  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  spot,  out  of 
the  region  where  wars  and  chiding  were  at  rest. 
And  Milton  himself  in  the  motto  placed  before  the 
volume  seems  to  wish  to  recall  to  men's  minds  by 
his  book  that  his  true  place  was  not  among  these 
noises,  but  among  the  laurelled  choir.  He  begs,  with 
Thyrsis,  that  his  brow  may  be  girt  with  the  nard  of 
the  field  lest  an  ill  tongue  may  hurt  the  poet  yet  to  be, 

"  Baccare  frontem 
Cingite,  ne  vati  noceat  mala  lingua  future" 

Literary  Work. — Within  a  few  weeks  after  this 
publication,  as  if  it  had  stimulated  his  poetical  vein,  s 
he  wrote  the  two  Divorce  sonnets — On  the  Detraction 
which  followed  on  my  writing  certain  Treatises — and 
the  sonnet  on  Henry  Lawes,  whom  he  now,  at  his 
house  in  Barbican,  saw  frequently.  Then  came  the 
anti-Presbyterian  sonnet  of  which  I  have  spoken 
already ;  and  Milton,  having  discharged  his  thunder, 
sat  down  to  his  work  with  his  pupils.  The  Powells 
came  up  from  Oxford  to  stay  with  him,  and  in  the 


II.]  THE   PROSE   WORKS.  49 

midst  of  the  crowded  house  his  first  child  was  born, 
Anne,  on  the  29th  July,  1646  ;  "a  brave  girl,  though 
she  grew  up  more  and  more  decrepit."  Shortly  after- 
wards Mr.  Powell  and  Milton's  father  died,  and  one 
other  friend,  Mrs.  Catherine  Thompson,  to  whose 
memory  he  wrote  the  Fourteenth  Sonnet.  The  Latin 
Ode  to  John  Rous,  on  the  loss  of  a  copy  of  the 
poems,  shows  that  Milton  could  still  play  a  little  ; 
and  a  letter  to  Carlo  Dati,  in  answer  to  one  from  this 
Florentine  friend,  speaks  of  his  loneliness  among  un- 
congenial persons,  and  recalls  the  earlier  days  when 
he  was  happier,  and  his  brighter  life  in  Italy.  This 
letter  was  written  in  the  spring  of  1647,  when  Milton, 
now  left  by  the  Powell  family,  and  at  first  much 
engaged  in  education,  suddenly  broke  off  all  tutor- 
ing, left  his  house  in  Barbican,  and  removed  to  High 
Holborn.  This  change  was  made  in  the  interval  of 
time  between  Cromwell's  and  Fairfax's  march  through 
London  in  August,  and  the  King's  flight  from  Hampton 
Court  to  the  Isle  of  Wight  in  November,  1647.  In 
heart  a  republican,  and  already  prepared  to  defend 
that  cause,  he  was  employed  on  peaceful  schemes  of 
literature,  on  collecting  materials  for  a  Latin  Dic- 
tionary, on  a  Complete  History  of  England,  and  on 
a  Methodical  Digest  of  Christian  Doctrine.  So 
vigorous  was  his  intellect  that  in  the  very  midst  of 
a  tremendous  political  crisis,  of  fierce  controversy, 
and  of  renewed  attacks  on  himself  by  the  Presby- 
terian Church-government  under  which  religious 
London  was  now  enslaved,  he  projected,  and  was 
carrying  out  the  work  of  three  men.  What  he  did 
in  the  way  of  poetry  was  to  translate  nine  of  the 
Psalms,  lxxx. — lxxxviii.  into  metre,  and  badly  done 
they  were. 

The  Second  Civil  War. — Then  began  the 
second  civil  war,  and  Moab,  and  Gebal,  and  Ammon, 
and  Amalek,  whose  overthrow  he  had  sung  in  the 
eighty-third  Psalm,  were  scattered  at  Preston  and 
Colchester,  and  he  celebrated  his  joy  at  the  begin- 
ning   of  September,    1648,    in   his   sonnet,    On   the 


50  MILTON.  [chap. 

Lord  General  Fairfax  at  the  Siege  of  Colchester ;  and 
prophesied  in  it  that  a  nobler  task  yet  awaited  his 
hand ;  the  freedom  of  truth  and  right  from  violence, 
and  of  public  faith  from  fraud.  His  hope  grew  greater 
with  every  step  towards  a  republic,  and  when  the 
treaty  between  Charles  and  the  Parliament  was  broken 
up,  and  the  king  arraigned,  sentenced  and  executed, 
January  30,  1649,  he  threw  himself  heart  and  soul 
into  the  work  of  defending  the  acts  of  the  Common- 
wealth. A  new  period  of  his  life  now  begins,  and  a 
new  class  of  works.  We  have  but  to  mention  that  in 
October,  1648,  his  second  daughter,  Mary,  was  born 
at  the  house  in  Holborn. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   COMMONWEALTH   AND   MILTON'S   SECRETARYSHIP. 

Milton's  first  Political  Pamphlet. — A  month 
after  the  death  of  the  King  monarchy  was  formally 
put  aside,  and  in  two  months  more  the  Common- 
wealth was  proclaimed.  Meanwhile,  Milton  published 
on  the  13th  of  February  his  pamphlet  on  "  The 
Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates ;  proving,  That  it 
is  lawful!,  and  hath  been  held  so,  through  all  ages, 
for  any,  who  have  the  power,  to  call  to  account  a 
Tyrant,  or  wicked  King,  and  after  due  conviction,  to 
depose  and  put  him  to  death,  if  the  ordinary  Magis- 
trates have  neglected  or  deny'd  to  do  it."  His  re- 
publican ardour  was  so  great  that  he  was  employed 
on  this  tract  during  the  trial  of  the  King;  and  it 
entered  into  the  lists  of  the  great  controversy  about 
Charles's  death,  just  a  fortnight  after  his  execution, 
and  four  days  after  the  Eikon  Basilike  had  appeared. 
The  argument  of  Milton's  work  is  based  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  all  men  are  naturally  born  free.  They  bind 
themselves  together  in  communities.  They,  because 
they  freely  choose  a  king,  may  freely  depose  him  ; 
much  more  may  they  depose  and  slay  a  tyrant  who 


in.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  51 

reigns  only  for  himself  and  his  faction,  and  this  is  the 
duty  of  the  magistrates.  Charles  was  such  a  tyrant, 
and  the  irregular  acts  of  the  army  are  defended, 
because  the  magistrates  had  neglected  their  duty. 

Milton  as  Latin  Secretary. — The  work  was 
not  commanded,  but  done  out  of  his  own  desire  ;  and 
it  was  so  happily  timed  that  it  brought  him  state 
employment.  "  No  one  ever  saw  me  going  about, 
no  one  ever  saw  me  asking  anything  of  my  friends, 
or  stationed  at  the  doors  of  the  court  with  a  peti- 
tioner's face — I  kept  myself  almost  entirely  at  home, 
managing  on  my  own  resources  to  lead  my  frugal 
life.  I  turned  myself  to  the  task  of  drawing  out 
the  history  of  my  country — when  lo  !  the  Council  of 
State,  invites  me,  dreaming  of  nothing  of  the  sort, 
to  a  post  in  connexion  with  it,  with  a  view  to  the  use 
of  my  services,  chiefly  in  foreign  affairs."  It  is  thus 
he  tells  the  tale  of  his  appointment  as  Latin  Secretary, 
or  Secretary  of  Foreign  Tongues.  It  was  given  him 
a  month  after  his  Tract  on  The  Tenure  of  Kings  and 
Magistrates,  when  he  was  forty- one  years  of  age,  and 
his  salary  was  288/.  135-.  6\d.  a  year.  He  continued 
in  this  office,  even  after  his  blindness,  to  the  end  of 
the  Commonwealth.  With  the  real  government  or 
politics  of  the  country  he  seems  to  have  had  nothing 
to  do,  nor  does  his  advice  ever  seem  to  have  been 
asked.  The  letters  he  wrote  to  foreign  governments 
were  written  under  instructions,  and  the  style  and 
wording  were  alone  left  to  him.  In  fact  he  was 
nothing  more,  politically,  than  the  literary  clerk  of  the 
Foreign  Office.  But  beyond  this,  and  quite  distinct 
from  it,  and  the  real  reason  of  his  appointment,  he 
was  used  by  the  government  as  its  pamphleteer. 
He  was  the  first  of  those  literary  partizans  who,  a 
hundred  years  later,  came  to  be  so  frequently  em- 
ployed by  our  governments.  In  his  case,  however, 
the  work  he  had  to  do  was  done,  not  for  pay  or  for 
self  in  any  form,  but  through  love  of  the  cause  ot 
the  Commonwealth,  and  with  an  ardour  which  only 
too  frequently  degenerated  into  ferocity.    The  ferocity, 


52  MILTON.  [chap. 

the  coarseness,  the  odious  personalities,  were  charac- 
teristic of  the  controversial  writings  of  the  day,  and 
Milton,  unworthy  of  his  own  dignity,  but  with  great 
intellectual  force,  is  more  ferocious,  more  coarse, 
more  personal,  and  descends  to  more  brutal  detail 
than  any  of  his  fellows  and  opponents.  Leaving 
aside  this  fault,  the  work  he  had  to  do  was  done  as 
no  other  man  in  England  could  have  done  it,  and 
perhaps,  had  it  not  been  so  fierce,  it  had  not  told  as 
it  did  on  England  and  on  Europe. 

The  second  political  pamphlet,  this  time  done 
to  order,  was  the  Observations  upon  the  Articles  of  Peace 
with  the  Irish  Rebels,  on  the  letter  of  Ormond  to  Colonel 
/ones,  and  the  Representation  of  the  Presbytery  at 
Belfast.  It  was  published  in  May,  1649,  when 
Ormond  was  trying  to  bring  the  Irish,  the  English 
settlers,  and  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  all  together  to 
the  cause  of  Charles  II. 

The  Eikonoclastes,  the  third  of  these,  was  sent 
forth  from  his  new  lodgings  near  Charing-Cross  on 
October  6,  1649.  The  Eikon  Basilike,  to  which  it 
was  an  answer,  purported  to  be  written  by  Charles  I. 
himself  in  his  last  years.  It  was  a  book  of  prayers 
and  meditations,  and  entitled  A  Portraiture  of  his 
Sacred  Majesty  in  his  Solitude  and  Sufferings.  Ac- 
cepted as  the  King's,  it  is  generally  believed  to  have 
been  written  by  Dr.  Gauden,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Exeter.  It  echoed  and  doubled  the  cry  of  horror 
which  arose  after  the  King's  execution  in  England  and 
Europe ;  and  its  popularity  was  such  that  within  the 
year  fifty  editions  of  it  appeared  in  various  languages. 
Milton's  answer  met  the  book  chapter  by  chapter, 
and  his  anti-royalism  is  stronger  in  the  Eikonoclastes 
than  in  the  Tenure  of  Kings.  It  convinced  none 
of  the  opposite  side,  but  it  strengthened  the  hands 
of  those  who  agreed  with  it.  A  second  edition  of  it, 
much  enlarged,  was  set  forth  in  1650. 

The  Defensio  pro  Populo  Anglicano,  his 
fourth  political  pamphlet,  made  more  noise ;  indeed 
it  sent  his  name  over  the  whole  of  educated  Europe 


in.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP  53 

There  was  no  scholar  so  famous  on  the  Continent  as 
Claude   de   Saumaise — Salmasius — the    Leyden    pro- 
fessor, and  Charles  II.  being  at  the  Hague,  engaged 
him  to.  write  a  book  against  the  Commonwealth.     In 
November,  1 649,  the  Defensio  Regia  pro  Carolo  I.  was 
ready,  and  soon  arrived  in  England.     It  was  a  slavish 
advocacy  of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  and  a  violent 
attack  on  the  regicides.     Written  in  Latin,  its  effect 
was  not  likely  to  be  great  in   England,  but  it  would 
deepen  the  distrust  and  hatred  of  the  Commonwealth 
abroad.     Milton's  answer,    the    Defensio  pro   Popido 
Anglicano,    appeared  in  April,  165 1.     It  meets  Sal- 
masius's  arguments  point    by  point,  with  reasonings 
which  have  more  to  do  with   quotations  from  autho- 
rities than  with  the  principles  in  question,  but  its  main 
end,  and  a  politic  one,  since  the  weight  of  Salmasius' s 
defence  lay  in  his  reputation,  was  to  hold  up  Salmasius 
to  the  laughter  and  contempt  of  Europe.     Were  that 
but  done,  Milton   wisely   thought,  Salmasius's   book 
would  have  little  value.     And  it  was  done.     By  skilful 
scorn  of  his  Latin  and  scholarship,  by  utter  contempt 
of   his   intelligence,    by   unutterable   abuse,    laid  on 
without  stint  or  modesty,  by  making  him  ridiculous  as 
a  henpecked  husband — "  an   eternally  speaking  ass, 
ridden  by  a  woman,"  is  one  of  the  last  epithets — Milton 
made  the  Defensio  Regia  absurd  in  making  its  author 
absurd.      The  scholars  on  the   Continent  who  were 
envious  of  Salmasius  chuckled  at  the  mauling  their 
"wonderful  one  "had  got  from  "the  English  mastiff." 
Complimentary  messages  poured  in;  Holland,  France, 
Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Germany  were  full  of  Milton's 
fame,  and  the  Council  of  State  returned  him  a  vote 
of  thanks  and  of  money  for  his  book  in  vindication 
of  the  Parliament  and  people  of  England.     And  by 
this  time,   at  the  end  of    165 1,   men's  eyes  abroad 
began  to  see  that  the  Commonwealth  was  not  to  be 
despised.      Cromwell  had   reconquered   Ireland,   the 
battle  of   Dunbar  had   been   fought,   Worcester  had 
followed,   and  Cromwell  was  now  at  Whitehall,  the 
chief  of  a  great  and  established  state. 


54  MILTON.  [chap. 

Home  Life  and  Blindness. — At  the  beginning 
of  1652  Milton  left  the  official  rooms  he  had  occupied 
in  Whitehall,  and  removed  to  a  pretty  garden-house 
in  Petty  France,  Westminster,  in  which  he  lived  for 
eight  years.  It  was  here  that  his  eyes,  much  worn 
by  his  work  on  the  £>efensio,  totally  failed  about  the 
middle  of  1652. 

"  What  supports  me,  dost  thou  ask? 
The  conscience,  friend,  to  have  lost  them  overpli'd 
In  liberty's  defence,  my  noble  task, 
With  which  all  Europe  rings  from  side  to  side." 

A  son  had  been  born  to  him  in  March,  165 1,  but  it 
had  died  an  infant,  and  he  was  now  alone  with  his 
daughters,  the  last  and  third  of  whom,  Deborah,  was 
born  in  May,  1652.  It  was  about  this  time,  when  the 
quarrel  between  Cromwell  and  Vane  had  come  to  an 
abrupt  close  by  Cromwell's  expulsion  of  the  Rump  of 
the  Long  Parliament  and  dissolution  of  the  Council  of 
State  in  April  1652,  that  Milton  wrote  and  sent  his 
two  sonnets  to  these  men.  The  original  title  of  the 
first  explains  its  aim.  To  the  Lord  General  Cromwell, 
May,  1652,  on  the  Proposals  of  Certain  Ministers  at 
the  Co?mnittee  for  Propagation  of  the  Gospel.  That 
Committee  was  in  fact  set  to  consider  the  question 
whether  the  Commonwealth  should  have  an  Estab- 
lished or  a  Voluntary  Church,  and  it  decided  in  favour 
of  the  former.  Milton's  sonnet  is  an  appeal  to 
Cromwell,  who  sat  on  the  Committee,  to  do  away 
with  a  hireling  Church. 

"  Help  us  to  save  free  conscience  from  the  paw 
Of  hireling  wolves,  whose  Gospel  is  their  maw." 

The  sonnet  to  Vane,  in  its  appeal  to  him  as 
knowing  what  severs  spiritual  and  civil  power,  is 
directed  to  the  same  end.  Fully  wrapt  up  in  these 
English  questions,  he  was  not  so  lost  in  them  as  not 
to  feel  care  for  nations  beyond  England,  and  his  letter 
written  in  June  to  Philaras,  an  Athenian,  is  of  special 
interest.  He  speaks  in  it  like  a  scholar  of  to-day, 
who  full  of  gratitude   to    Greek   literature,  longs   for 


in.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  55 

Greek  liberty.  "  Whatever  literary  advance  I  have 
made,  I  owe  to  steady  intimacy  with  the  writings  of 
the  old  Athenians  from  my  youth  upwards.  Were 
there  in  me  such  a  power  of  pleading,  that  I  could 
rouse  our  armies  and  fleets  for  the  deliverance  of 
Greece,  the  land  of  eloquence,  from  her  Ottoman 
oppressor, — to  which  mighty  act  you  seem  almost  to 
implore  our  aid — truly  there  is  nothing  I  could  more 
desire  to  do.  For  what  did  even  the  bravest  men  of 
old  or  the  most  eloquent,  consider  more  glorious  or 
more  worthy  of  them,  than,  by  pleading  or  bravely 
acting,  to  make  the  Greeks  free  and  self-governing 
(eXevdepovc;  kcu  avTovojjLovq).  There  is,  however,  some- 
thing else  to  be  tried,  and  in  my  judgment  far  the 
most  important :  namely  that  some  one  should  arouse 
and  rekindle  in  the  minds  of  the  Greeks,  by  the 
relation  of  that  old  story,  the  old  Greek  valour  itself, 
the  old  industry,  the  old  patience  of  labour.  Could 
some  one  do  that  ....  then  I  am  confident  neither 
would  the  Greeks  be  wanting  to  themselves,  nor  any 
other  nation  wanting  to  the  Greeks. Wl 

It  is  pleasant  to  come  across  a  letter  so  full  of 
interest  to  English  literature  in  the  midst  of  angry 
disputes ;  but  its  tone  of  apartness  from  strife  was  not 
long  the  tone  of  Milton. 

Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor. — He  had  waited  a 
whole  year  in  vain  for  a  reply  from  Salmasius  who 
was  "  biting  his  thumbs  at  Leyden,  in  silence,  not 
knowing  how  to  salve  his  wounds  and  scars."  Others 
however  took  up  his  defence,  and  among  many  pam- 
phlets, one  at  last  appeared  about  August,  1652, 
which  called  aloud  for  a  reply.  Issued  anonymously, 
its  title  was,  Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor  ad  Caelum  ad- 
versus  Parricidas  Anglicanos — The  cry  of  the  King's 
blood  to  Heaven  against  the  English  Parricides.  It 
was  able,  scurrilous  to  excess,  full  of  charges  against 
Milton's  personal  character,  and  generally  attributed 
to    Alexander  Morus.     Moms  was  a  Frenchman  of 

1  See  for  the  whole  letter,  Masson's  Life  of  Milton,  vol.  iv. 
p.  444* 


56  MILTON.  [chap. 

Scotch  descent,  who  had  been  professor  of  Greek  and 
a  popular  preacher  in  Geneva.  Moving  to  Amster- 
dam he  made  a  friendship  with  Salmasius,  which  was 
soon  broken  up  by  a  domestic  scandal. 

Milton  in  1653.— Milton  did  not  answer  this 
pamphlet  at  once.  His  health  was  infirm,  he  was 
grieved  for  his  eyes  ;  but  being  relieved  in  December, 
1652,  of  the  heavier  details  of  his  secretaryship  which 
were  put  into  Thurloe's  hands,  he  employed  the  time 
thus  gained  in  making  ready  the  answer.  While  he 
waited,  looking  for  Salmasius'  attack,  he  was  some- 
what consoled  for  his  ills  by  a  new  friend,  who  became 
his  assistant  secretary,  clung  faithfully  to  his  fortunes 
and  was  worthy  of  his  love.  For  it  was  late  in  this 
year  of  1652  that  he  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Andrew  Marvell,  whom  he  at  once  recommended 
to  the  Council  for  employment.  The  dissolution 
of  the  Rump  of  the  Long  Parliament  by  Cromwell 
in  April,  1653,  was  approved  of  by  Milton.  He 
attested  that  approval  at  the  time,  if  we  may  believe 
that  the  letter  was  his  which  Masson  supposes  was 
written  to  Marvell  in  the  May  of  that  year — A 
letter  to  a  gentletnan  in  the  country,  touching  the 
dissolution  of  the  late  Parlia?nent.  Philip  Meadows 
was  now  joined  to  him  as  assistant,  and  Milton  did 
but  little  state  work  during  the  interim  of  Cromwell's 
dictatorship.  Among  other  friends,  Roger  Williams, 
the  colonist  and  president  of  Rhode  Island,  was 
frequently  with  him.  His  translations  of  Ps.  i.— viii. 
and  perhaps  that  of  Horace,  Ode  v.,  Bk.  i.,  were 
made  this  year.  At  the  end  of  it  he  heard  of  Sal- 
masius' death,  and  saw  the  Protectorate  begin. 

Defensio  Secunda.— It  was  not  till  May,  1654, 
that  Milton's  answer  to  the  Regit  Sanguinis  Clamor 
appeared.  Salmasius  had  died  in  September,  1653, 
and  Milton  fell  upon  the  unfortunate  Morus,  who, 
he  presumed,  had  written  the  book.  A  great  part 
of  the  Defensio  Secunda  is  a  terrible,  reiterated,  and 
exhausting  invective  against  Salmasius,  Morus,  and 
the  printer  Ulac,    who  had  published  the  Cry  of  the 


Hi.]  MILTON'S  SFXRETARYSHIP.  57 

Royal  Blood.  Their  lives  and  everything  ill  they  had 
ever  done  are  pitilessly  raked  up ;  again  and  again, 
like  an  unsated  shark,  Milton  returns  to  the  charge 
to  draw  fresh  blood  from  his  dead  and  living  foes ; 
it  is  the  most  merciless  thing  in  our  literature. 
He  had  some  cause  for  this,  for  he  had  been  shame- 
lessly vilified  by  the  author  of  the  tract ;  and  one 
great  interest  of  his  reply  is  that  in  it,  in  self-defence, 
he  wrote  a  connected  autobiographical  sketch  of 
himself,  on  which  all  those  who  have  written  his  life 
have  based  their  work. 

Its  Historical  Interest  is  that,  being  written 
after  the  Protectorate  was  established,  it  gives  Milton's 
view  of  that  change  of  government.  He  repeats  the 
chief  charges  against  Cromwell  and  defends  him  again 
from  them ;  he  makes  fine  panegyrics  on  Bradshaw, 
Fairfax,  and  many  other  men  of  the  Commonwealth, 
and  a  most  noble  one  on  Cromwell,  in  which  he 
approves  of  the  Protectorate,  though  not  without 
delicate  warnings  of  its  dangers.  He  bids  Cromwell 
remember  how  dear  a  thing  is  the  liberty  now 
intrusted  to  him,  and  how  disastrous  it  would  be 
should  he  invade  the  liberty  he  had  defended  ;  and 
the  liberty  he  implores  him  to  defend  is  one  which 
may  be  best  preserved  and  established — by  associating 
with  him  the  wisest  companions  of  his  labours ;  by 
the  taking  away  of  the  evil  of  a  state  Church ;  by 
refraining  from  over  legislation,  keeping  only  those 
laws  which  restrain  positive  crime;  by  making  better 
provisions  for  education  ;  by  doing  away  with  all 
censorship  of  the  press ;  and  by  giving  absolute 
freedom  to  opinion.  The  point  on  which  he  was 
strongest  was  the  disestablishment  of  the  Church.  It 
was  the  point  on  which  Cromwell  did  not  yield  an 
inch  ;  he  did  not  answer  the  cry  of  Milton's  sonnet 
nor  the  prayer  of  the  Defensio  Secunda. 

The  Pro  Se  Defensio.  —  The  chief  person 
attacked  by  Milton  suffered  not  only  in  reality, 
but  in  anticipation.  Morus  heard  of  the  Defensio 
Secunda  before  it   appeared,    and    caused    it    to  be 


58  MILTON.  [chap. 

plainly  told  to  Milton  that  he  was  not  the  author 
of  the  Cry.  Milton  did  not  believe  his  denial,  but 
before  a  year  had  passed  by — partly  in  October,  1654, 
and  partly  in  April,  1655 — Moms  replied  in  his  Public 
Testimony  against  the  Calumnies  of  J oh?i  Milton.  Mil- 
ton had  already  finished  his  reply  to  the  first  part 
of  this  Testimony,  but  delayed  it  till  he  had  also 
answered  the  Supplement  of  April.  The  completed 
book,  the  Pro  se  Defensio,  appeared  in  August,  1655  : 
in  which  he  not  only  reiterates  the  immoral  charges 
against  Morus,  but,  in  spite  of  the  proof  to  the  con- 
trary, asserts  that  he  is  rightly  called  the  author  of 
the  Regii  Sanguinis  Clamor.  But  he  asserts  it  in  a 
modified  form.  He  maintains  that  though  Morus  may 
not  have  written  the  pamphlet,  yet  that  he  made  himself 
responsible  for  it.  He  asserts  that  Morus  edited  it, 
prefixed  a  letter  to  it  signed  by  his  name,  wrote  the 
defamatory  iambics  at  the  end,  and  took  the  credit  of 
the  work  until  the  storm  arose.  And  all  this,  except 
that  Morus  wrote  the  abusive  iambics,  seems  to  be 
true.  The  thing  not  true  is  the  authorship  of  Morus. 
The  real  writer  was  Dr.  Peter  du  Moulin,  sometime 
rector  of  Sheldrake,  near  York,  who.  himself  in  1670, 
claimed  the  authorship,  and  declared  that  Milton  when 
he  wrote  the  Pro  se  Defensio  knew  that  the  Clamor 
was  not  written  by  Morus,  but  by  himself:  but 
"  preferred  my  getting  off  scatheless  to  being  found  in 
a  ridiculous  position  himself."  I  cannot  bring  myself 
to  believe  that  Milton  knew  who  was  the  real  author, 
but  it  seems  plain  that  he  was  carried  away  by  the 
heat  of  controversy  into  an  unworthy  position.  Inde- 
pendent of  the  inexcusable  ruthlessness  of  his  pursuit 
of  Morus'  character,  he  strove  hard  to  make  him 
responsible,  on  the  ground  of  a  single  letter  and  of 
the  editorship,  for  the  whole  of  the  pamphlet.  Masson 
says  that  after  the  Pro  se  Defensio,  Milton  preserved  a 
"  dignified  silence  "  on  the  matter.  It  does  not  seem 
a  dignified  silence,  and  it  does  seem  that,  so  far  as 
the  personal  controversy  goes,  Morus  occupies  a 
better  position  than  Milton. 


ill.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP  59 

The  End   of   the   Controversial   Period  of 

Milton's  life  draws  near,  and  we  are  heartily  glad  to 
leave  behind  us  the  records  of  his  personalities.  Full 
of  the  deepest  interest  while  they  are  autobiographical, 
they  are  worse  than  uninteresting  when  they  are  bio- 
graphical of  an  opponent.  Milton  was  not  an  amiable 
man,  when  he  was  traversed,  either  at  home  or 
abroad.  He  was  pleasant  with  his  friends  when  his 
friends  were  fond  of  him  and  gave  back  his  courteous 
praise  \  he  was  pleasant  when  he  was  happy,  and  being 
more  happy  when  he  was  young,  he  was  pleasantest 
then.  But  he  could  not  bear  with  patience  domestic 
misfortune  which  he  had  brought  on  himself;  he  was 
a  severe  father  and  husband  ;  and  when  he  was 
attacked  by  an  adversary  he  returned  the  blows,  not 
only  for  the  sake  of  justice  and  truth  but  also  be- 
cause he  was  injured  in  his  proud  self-esteem,  with 
an  unequalled  ferocity.  His  intense  individuality 
made  him  all  the  more  unfit  for  personal  controversy ; 
but  much  of  the  bitterness  and  violence  of  the  manner 
is  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  painful  repression  for 
so  long  of  his  true  nature,  and  by  the  sacrifice  of  his 
natural  work.  But,  with  all  exceptions,  no  grander  figure 
stands  forth  in  the  whole  of  English  literature,  scarcely 
any  grander  in  English  history,  than  the  figure  of  the 
blind,  resolute,  eloquent  man  who  now,  fallen  on  days 
that  grew  graver  and  graver,  sat  in  his  room  at  West- 
minster, impassioned  for  work,  still  more  impassioned 
for  liberty;  having  done  with  personal  wars;  and 
looking  forward  always  to  the  time  when  he  might 
let  himself  loose,  and,  leaving  the  disputes  and 
passions  of  earth,  soar  into  the  poetic  air  in  which 
alone  he  breathed  with  ease  and  pleasure  and 
triumph.  He  loved  beauty,  not  only  the  beauty  of 
human  passion  or  of  nature,  but  still  more  the  solemn 
beauty  of  lofty  thought,  more  than  any  man  in  England 
has  ever  loved  it;  and  yet,  in  the  midst  of  the 
crowding  imaginations  into  which  he  shaped  the 
messages  his  celestial  patroness,  Urania,  sent  him,  he 
kept  himself  to  the  work  he  thought  needful  for  his 


60  MILTON.  [chap. 

fellow-citizens,    and   waited   quietly,    until    all   other 
work  was  done,  to  do  his  greatest  work. 

Home  Life  and  Second  Marriage. — During 
this  last  controversy,  we  only  hear  his  lofty  music  in 
one  noble  poem,  the  sonnet  On  the  late  Massacre 
in  Piedmont,  written  after  the  letter  he  had  put  into 
Latin  for  the  Protector  and  sent  to  the  Duke  of 
Savoy,  in  July,  1655.  During  the  winter,  "being 
now  quiet  from  state  adversaries  and  public  contests," 
he  fell  back  on  the  work  of  his  three  large  compila- 
tions;  and  seeing  many  friends,  Lady  Ranelagh, 
Cyriack  Skinner,  Henry  Lawrence,  and  others,  was 
happy  and  at  rest.  The  gentle  and  patient  sonnet  to 
his  blindness,  and  the  resolute  one  on  the  same  subject 
addressed  to  Cyriack  Skinner,  belong  to  this  time  ; 
and  the  more  cheerful  and  artistic  side  of  his  life 
is  revealed  in  two  social  sonnets  to  Lawrence  and 
Skinner,  in  which  he  invites  them  to  supper.  In 
reading,  composing,  and  in  writing  state  letters,  the 
time  wore  quietly  away  till  the  12th  of  November, 
1656,  when  Milton  married  his  second  wife,  Katharine 
Woodcocke ;  and  nearly  four  months  afterwards  a 
letter  to  Em  eric  Bigot  speaks  of  his  calm  and  patient 
life.  "  I  am  glad  to  know,"  he  says,  "  that  you  are 
assured  of  my  tranquil  spirit  in  this  great  affliction  of 
the  loss  of  sight,  and  also  of  the  pleasure  I  have  in 
being  civil  and  attentive  in  the  reception  of  visitors 
from  abroad.  Why,  in  truth,  should  I  not  gently  bear 
the  loss  of  sight,  when  I  may  hope  that  it  is  not  so 
much  lost  as  retracted  inwards  for  the  sharpening 
rather  than  the  blunting  of  my  mental  edge."  A  blow 
fell  upon  him  in  the  following  February  when  he  lost 
his  wife,  and  in  the  last  of  his  sonnets  he  records  his 
grief,  his  love,  his  hope  of  meeting  her  in  heaven. 
The  only  other  literary  work .  he  did  was  to  edit 
Raleigh's  Cabinet  Council. 

The  State  Letters. — During  the  second  Pro- 
tectorate Milton  remained  in  office,  and  was  now 
assisted  in  it,  in  September,  1657,  by  Andrew 
Marvell.     In  August,  1658,  the  series  of  state  letters 


III.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  61 

he  had  written  for  Cromwell  closes  five  days  before 
the  death  of  the  Protector.  They  number  132  in  all, 
forty  four  written  during  the  Commonwealth  and 
Cromwell's  Dictatorship,  eighty-eight  during  the 
Protectorate.  As  the  Protectorate  lasted  almost  the 
same  time  as  the  previous  governments,  Milton's  work 
during  it  was  doubled,  and  it  may  be  that  in  some  of 
the  more  important  letters,  such  as  those  to  the  Duke 
of  Savoy  and  to  the  King  of  Sweden,  we  have  the 
result  not  only  of  Cromwell's  will  and  Thurloe's  sense, 
but  also  of  Milton's  thought.  Yet  it  was  not  as  the 
Latin  clerk  that  he  had  any  fame  during  the  Pro- 
tectorate, but  as  the  writer.  "  He  was  mightily  im- 
portuned," says  Aubrey,  "to  go  into  France  and  Italy. 
Foreigners  much  admired  him,  and  offered  him  great 
preferments  to  come  over  to  them,  and  chiefly  came 
to  England  to  see  O.  Protector  and  Mr.  J.  Milton,  and 
would  see  the  house  and  chamber  where  he  was  born." 
It  was  a  time  of  quiet,  so  quiet  that  he  took  up  at 
last  his  great  poem.  Paradise  Lost  was  certainly 
begun  and  conceived  as  an  epic  before  the  close 
of  the  Protectorate,  but  the  disastrous  descent  into 
ruin  after  Cromwell's  death  of  the  cause  he  loved, 
forced  Milton  back  into  politics. 

From  Cromwell's  Death  to  the  Restoration. 
— During  Richard's  Protectorate  Milton  was  still 
Latin  Secretary,  and  wrote  seventeen  state  letters 
(the  last  two  for  the  restored  Parliament  being  the 
last  he  ever  wrote)  before  the  25th  of  May,  1659, 
on  which  day  Richard  sent  in  his  abdication.  He 
did  no  more  work  of  this  kind,  but  he  was  nominally 
continued  as  Latin  Secretary  until  the  publication 
of  his  Ready  and  Easy  Way,  in  March,  1660.  The 
opinions  of  that  pamphlet,  the  growing  anti-Repub- 
licanism of  the  Council  of  State  when  it  and  Monk 
were  left  in  the  management  of  the  State  on  March  16, 
were  presumably  the  causes  of  his  dismissal,  and  this 
is  the  probable  date  of  it. 

The  Pamphlets  of  this  time  were  three ;  the  first 
two  on  the  question  of  a  Church;  the  third  on  the 


62  MILTON.  [chap. 

question  of  a  free  Commonwealth.  Taken  together, 
they  fix  Milton's  political  position  during  this  period, 
and  they  are  supplemented  by  two  letters  on  the 
state  of  affairs  to  a  friend  and  to  General  Monk. 
Milton  had  always  been  divided  from  Cromwell  on 
the  question  of  a  State  Church,  and  now  with  a  new 
Parliament  and  Protector  he  hoped  to  gain  a  hearing 
on  the  subject.  He  divided  the  matter  into  two 
parts.  "  Two  things  there  be  which  have  been  ever 
found  working  much  mischief  to  the  Church  of  God 
and  the  advancement  of  faith, — Force  on  the  one 
side  restraining,  and  Hire  on  the  other  side  corrupting, 
the  teachers  thereof." 

The  first  pamphlet  addressed  to  the  Parliament  of 
1659,  took  up  the  question  of  Force,  and  its  title 
explains  its  bearing — A  Treatise  of  Civil  Power  in 
Ecclesiastical  Causes :  Shewing  that  it  is  not  lawful  for 
any  Power  on  Earth  to  compel  in  Matters  of  Religion. 
He  argues  this  proposition  under  four  heads  and 
with  absolute  firmness.  The  last  sentence  is  a 
direct  attack  on  Cromwell  for  his  support  of  a 
State  Church.  "  Had  he  (the  magistrate)  once  learnt 
not  further  to  concern  himself  with  Church  affairs, 
half  his  labour  might  be  spared  and  the  Common- 
wealth better  tended."  Milton's  political  position  now 
becomes  clearer.  He  had  supported  the  Protectorate 
in  the  Defetisio  Secunda,  but  with  warnings  given 
to  Cromwell  of  the  dangers  it  might  bring  to  liberty ; 
and  as  time  went  on  he  saw  the  wisdom  of  his 
warnings.  His  republicanism  could  not  have  approved 
of  the  measures  of  Cromwell  in  the  latter  years  of 
his  government,  and  we  find  him  ominously  silent 
on  political  matters  during  those  years.  But  he  was 
a  personal  friend  to  Cromwell,  and  in  state  employ. 
He  would  then  content  himself  with  silence,  especially 
as  he  could  see  no  chance  of  things  being  bettered 
by  opposition.  Now  however  that  Cromwell  was 
dead,  and  he  himself  still  employed  by  a  Republican 
Parliament,  he  broke  silence,  and  in  this  treatise 
of  Civil  Power,   expressed  not  only  his   blame  of 


in.]  MILTON'S   SECRETARYSHIP.  63 

Cromwell's  State  Church  policy,  but  plainly  ranged 
himself  on  the  side  of  the  Old  Republican  party. 
A  letter  from  one  of  this  party  (Moses  Wall),  quoted 
by  Masson,  accepts  him  as  one  of  the  good  old  cause. 
The  second  pamphlet  fixed  his  position  even  more 
plainly.  It  was  put  forth  in  August,  1659, — Consider- 
ations touching  the  Likeliest  Means  to  Remove  Hirelings 
out  of  the  Church.  It  abolishes  tithes,  and  does  away 
with  all  taxation  of  any  form  for  the  support  of 
religion  ;  it  makes  the  payment  of  ministers  wholly 
voluntary.  The  former  pamphlet  disestablished,  this 
wholly  disendows  the  Church.  It  contains  an  ad- 
ditional reflection  on  Cromwell  for  making  the  Church 
his  ward — "  to  subject  her  to  his  (the  magistrate's) 
political  drifts  and  conceived  opinions  by  mastering 
her  revenue,  and  so  by  his  Examinant  Committees 
to  circumscribe  her  free  election  of  ministers  is 
neither  just  nor  pious  !"  The  prefatory  address  to 
Parliament  separates  him  still  more  from  the  Crom- 
wellite  party.  He  calls  the  Parliament — that  is,  the 
remnant  of  the  Rump  whom  Cromwell  had  dissolved 
"  the  authors  and  the  best  patrons  of  religious  civil 
liberty  that  ever  these  islands  brought  forth."  The 
next  sentence  is  still  more  remarkable.  "  The  care 
and  tuition  of  whose  peace  and  safety,  after  a  short 
but  scandalous  night  of  interruption,  is  now  again, 
by  a  new  dawning  of  God's  miraculous  providence 
among  us,  revolved  upon  your  shoulders."  The 
phrase  in  italics  has  been  thought  to  be  a  reference 
to  Cromwell's  Protectorate.  If  so,  Milton's  action 
now  would  be  a  violent  reaction,  considering  he  had 
been  with  Cromwell  all  these  years ;  and  the  phrase 
seems  not  only  unworthy  of  their  long  association, 
but  scarcely  reconcilable  with  the  praise  in  the 
Defensio  Secunda.  It  may  be  that  it  refers,  as  Masson 
conjectures,  to  "the  fortnight  or  so  of  ' Wallingford 
House  usurpation'  which  broke  up  Richard's  Parlia- 
ment and  Protectorate,"  but  it  certainly  looks  like  the 
other.  At  any  rate  the  whole  drift  of  the  address 
and  the  treatise  is  against  the  measures  of  the 
5 


64  MILTON.  [chap. 

Protectorate    and    in    behalf    of    the    ideas    of    the 
Republicans  of  the  Parliament. 

A  Letter  to  a  Friend  Concerning  the  Ruptures  of 
the  Commonwealth,  written  after  Lambert  had  driven 
out  the  Parliament  on  October  13,  begins  Milton's 
political  recommendations.  In  the  anarchy  then  pre- 
vailing he  left  the  question  of  a  State  Church  aside  and 
turned  to  the  question  of  the  right  form  of  govern- 
ment. In  this  letter  he  sketches  a  constitution,  formed 
of  a  Council  of  State  and  an  Army  Council,  both 
bound  by  a  solemn  oath  to  support  each  other,  to 
establish  liberty  of  conscience,  and  to  resist  Monarchy. 
But  bold  as  Milton  seemed,  he  had  not  much  hope 
of  good ;  things  seemed  to  him  "  worthier  of  silence 
than  of  commemoration.  What  is  needed  is  not  one 
to  compile  a  history  of  our  troubles,  but  one  to  happily 
end  the  troubles  ....  amid  these  our  civil  discords 
or  rather  sheer  madnesses."  The  course  of  affairs 
was  not  likely  to  make  him  less  despondent.  No 
sooner  was  the  Rump  Parliament  restored  than 
Monk  marched  into  London,  and  Milton,  still 
hoping,  prepared  a  new  political  pamphlet ;  but 
when  Monk  seceded  from  the  Rump,  when  he 
brought  back  to  Parliament  the  members  who  had 
protested  eleven  years  ago  against  the  Commonwealth 
and  had  been  shut  out  in  consequence,  and  when  the 
Rump  was  "  roasted  "  in  the  city,  Milton  felt  that  the 
Republican  cause  was  lost.  Still  he  would  not  give 
way,  and  on  Monk  being  made  Dictator  he  published 
his  pamphlet,  March  3,  1660. 

The  Ready  and  Easy  Way  to  Establish  a  Free 
Commonwealth  was  a  determined  plea  for  a  Repub- 
lic against  a  Monarchy ;  full  of  fierce  warnings  and 
declamation  against  kings,  and  ending  with  a  daring 
application  of  Jeremiah's  cry  against  Coniah  to 
Charles  II.  Modern  democracy  would  hardly  approve 
of  its  main  suggestion  that  the  government  should  be 
carried  on  by  a  Grand  Council  or  Parliament  of  the 
ablest  men,  to  sit  in  perpetuity  and  do  their  business 
by  means  of  a  Council  of  State ;  but  the  suggestion 


in.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  65 

agrees  with  Milton's  view  of  a  government  of  the 
best,  and  with  his  dislike,  even  his  contempt,  of  the 
uneducated  mob.  Its  argument  and  ideas  were 
repeated  in  a  private  letter  to  Monk — Present  Means 
and  brief  Delineation  of  a  Free  Commonwealth.  Both 
fell  dead  on  Monk  and  the  Parliament ;  royal  ism 
grew,  Parliament  was  dissolved,  and  the  Convention 
Parliament  summoned,  April  25,  1660.  He  now 
stood  alone,  with  Lambert,  against  the  whole  nation. 

Attacked  on  all  sides,  preached  against  by  Dr. 
Griffiths,  looked  coldly  on  by  the  General  and  the 
Council,  held  up  as  fruit  ripening  for  Tyburn,  like 
Abdiel,  "  among  the  faithless  faithful  only/'  he  set 
himself  to  resist  to  the  death.  His  notes  on  Dr. 
Griffiths'  sermon  were  followed  by  a  second  and  en- 
larged edition  of  the  Ready  and  Easy  Way,  in  which 
he  drew  a  fierce  picture  of  the  servile  court  and  the 
overwhelming  evils  of  monarchy.  It  was  answered 
by  two  sharp  pamphlets,  No  Blind  Guides,  and  The 
Dignity  of  Kingship  asserted.  But  Milton  had  no 
more  to  say.  On  the  8th  of  May  Charles  was  pro- 
claimed, on  the  29th  he  entered  London  ;  and  Milton, 
quitting  his  house  in  Petty  France,  lay  in  hiding  against 
the  storm — while  his  Defensio  Prima  and  Eikojwclastes 
were  burnt  by  the  hangman — in  a  friend's  house  in 
Bartholomew  Close,  till  the  Act  of  Indemnity  in 
August.  For  a  time  in  custody,  he  was  finally  re- 
leased in  December,  probably  at  the  intercession  of 
Sir  W.  Davenant,  the  new  Poet  Laureate,  to  whom 
Milton  had  done  the  same  kindness  under  the 
Commonwealth.  So  closed  the  long  battle  of 
twenty  years,  and  Milton,  having  done  with  Action, 
took  up,  not  exhausted,  Contemplation;  poor,  but 
rich  in  imagination,  blind,  but  illumined  with  inward 
light— 

"  He  that  has  light  within  his  own  clear  breast 
May  sit  i'  the  centre,  and  enjoy  bright  day." 


66  MILTON.  [chap. 


PROSE  WORKS  AND  SONNETS. 

The  Prose  Works,  as  a  whole,  are  not 
readable.  They  are  controversial;  the  interest  of  most 
of  their  controversies  is  past,  and  they  have  all  the 
vices  of  controversy.  They  descend  to  brutalities  of 
personal  abuse  and  recrimination;  they  are  often 
coarse,  they  are  full  of  the  miseries  of  debate.  It  is 
only  their  force  which,  in  their  abusive  passages, 
saves  them  from  being  revolting.  We  step  from 
passages  full  of  stately  thought  and  splendid  diction 
into  passages  which  we  are  almost  ashamed  to 
read.  It  is  the  manner  of  the  time,  but  it  is  not 
a  pleasant  manner.  The  arguments  are  always  pas- 
sionate, but  they  are  intellectually  arranged.  Their 
arrangement,  which  is  more  on  the  ground  the  oppo- 
nent occupies,  his  points  one  after  another  being  taken 
up,  than  on  the  ground  of  ideas,  makes  them  cold  in 
spite  of  their  passion.  They  are  overloaded,  piled  up 
with  metaphors,  syllogisms,  and  cold  sarcasms.  Illus- 
trations, quotations,  old  myths  in  new  forms,  texts, 
geography,  all  the  kind  of  learning  we  find  in  Burton's 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  are  poured,  frequently  without 
careful  choice,  into  the  treatises.  They  are  polemical, 
but  it  is  inaccurate  to  call  them  theological,  or  to  say 
that  their  controversy  is  religious.  They  are  really,  with 
few  exceptions,  treatises  in  defence  of  religious, 
civil,  and  social  liberty.  This  was  Milton's  own 
view  of  them,  and  if  we  are  not  much  interested  in 
them,  it  is  because  the  liberty  they  asked  for  is  nearly 
altogether  won. 

But  there  is  another  side.  They  have,  throughout, 
intellectual  force,  and  the  ease  that  comes  of  it.  The 
impression  of  an  intense  individuality  settles  down  on 
us,  as  we  read,  like  a  physical  weight.  Their  ardour 
for,  and  their  belief  in,  the  things  maintained ;  the  sense 
of  a  great  moral  power  accompanying  them,  makes  on 
us  that  impression  of  distinct  and  powerful  character 


ill.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  67 

which  in  itself  is  a  great  part  of  style.  Their  mannei 
is  always  victorious  ;  an  audacity  and  a  defiant  life 
fill  their  controversy.  At  times  they  rise  into  an  elo- 
quence which  has  nothing  like  it  in  English  literature 
for  grandeur,  and  music,  and  splendour.  This  elo- 
quence is  mostly  found  in  passages  that  have  been 
inspired  by  religious  rapture.  But  his  philosophic 
love  of  temperance,  based  in  him  on  intellect  as  well 
as  on  conscience,  and  his  love  of  liberty  also  inspire 
him.  The  lines  from  Comus  describe  his  temper  in 
these  eloquent  hours — 

"  Yet  should  I  try,  the  uncontrolled  worth 

Of  this  pure  cause  would  kindle  my  rapt  spirits 

To  such  a  flame  of  sacred  vehemence, 

That  dumb  things  would  be  moved  to  sympathise." 

Perhaps  he  is  greatest  of  all  when  he  binds  up 
religious  rapture  and  the  passion  of  liberty  into  one, 
and  pours  forth  prayer  to  God  in  behalf  of  freedom. 
But  I  do  not  think  such  passages  are  pure  prose. 
Milton  himself  prefaces  his  outburst  about  "  Zeal"  by 
saying,  "That  I  may  have  leave  to  soar  a  little." 
And  they  have  the  kind  of  construction  he  uses  in 
blank  verse,  and  their  music  is  like  that  of  Paradise 
Lost,  a  music  like  a  fugue,  overlapping  and  involved. 
What  Jubal  did,  Milton  does  here  in  these  organ- 
passages, 

11  His  volant  touch 
Instinct,  through  all  proportions  low  and  high 
Fled  and  pursued  transverse  the  resonant  fugue." 

He  is  nearly  at  his  best  as  a  prose  _  writer  in  the 
Areopagitica — he  is  quite  at  his  best  in  the  simple 
and  noble  pieces  of  defensive  autobiography. 

Sonnets. — The  Sonnets  of  Milton  belong  mainly 
to  the  period  of  his  prose  writings.  The  ideal  sonnet 
is  a  poem  of  fourteen  lines  distributed  into  two 
systems.  The  first  system  consists  of  the  first 
eight  lines,  and  should  be  complete  in  itself;  the 
second  system,  of  the  six  remaining  lines.  The  eight 
lines  ought  to  have  only  two  rhymes,  and  these  rhymes 
are  arranged  in  a  fixed  order.     The  first,  fourth,  fifth, 


6S  MILTON.  [chap. 

and  eighth  lines  must  rhyme  with  each  other.  This 
is  the  "  strong  framework  "  of  the  sonnet.  Within 
this,  the  second,  third,  sixth,  and  seventh  are  also  to 
rhyme  together.  This  is  the  inner  filling  up  of  the 
framework  of  the  first  system.  After  the  first  system, 
at  which  there  is  a  pause  in  the  thought,  the  second 
system  of  six  lines  ought  only  to  have  two  rhymes  ; 
one  after  another,  a  b,  a  b,  a  b.  This  is  the  perfect 
sonnet.  But  sonnet  writers,  especially  in  English, 
where  rhymes  are  not  so  numerous  as  in  Italian, 
allow  themselves  the  relaxation  of  two  rhymes  within 
the  filling  up  of  the  framework  of  the  first  system, 
and  make  the  second  and  third  rhyme  together,  and 
the  sixth  and  seventh.  They  relax  still  further  in 
the  second  system  and  bring  into  it  three  rhymes, 
and  these  are  arranged  in  almost  any  order  which 
suits  the  convenience  or  fancy  of  the  writer. 

The  sonnet  arose  in  Italy.  Wyatt  brought  it  from 
Italy  to  England  and  wrote  it  more  strictly  than 
Surrey  who  relaxed  it.  The  poets  who  followed  were 
content  to  interchange  its  rhymes  as  they  pleased, 
provided  that  the  whole  poem  consisted  of  fourteen 
lines.  Spenser  and  Shakspere  adopted  each  a 
special  type,  and  established  it.  They  both  use 
three  quatrains  with  a  pause  in  the  sense  after  each, 
and  then  a  couplet  at  the  close,  which  epigram- 
matically  resumes  or  points  the  thought  of  the  sonnet. 
But  Spenser  uses  only  five  rhymes,  while  Shakspere 
uses  seven.  In  both,  the  rhymes  are  alternate  in  the 
three  quatrains,  but  Spenser  makes  the  last  rhyme  of 
the  first  quatrain  begin  the  second,  and  the  last  of 
the  second  begin  the  third.  His  form,  then,  has  less 
rhymes  than  Shakspere's,  but  it  is  less  compact  in 
the  parts.  Both,  as  well  as  Drummond,  who  kept 
nearly  to  the  Italian  form,  held  to  the  rhyming 
couplet  at  the  close,  which  was  an  abomination  in 
critical  eyes.  Milton  uses  it  but  once  in  his  English 
sonnets. 

Milton  brought  back  the  sonnet  to  its  original  and 
strict  type,  the  type  that  Petrarca  fixed.     He  calls  his 


hi.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  69 

first  sonnet  a  composition  in  the  Petrarchian  stanza. 
The  first  was  written  on  leaving  Cambridge,  the  second 
at  Horton.  Five  Italian  sonnets  and  a  canzone  follow, 
and  were  written  in  Italy.  The  eighth  was  written 
in  1642,  and  the  last  sixteen  when  he  had  entered 
into  the  noises  of  his  controversial  career.     Then 

"  In  his  hand 
The  thing  became  a  trumpet,  whence  he  blew 
Soul-animating  strains. 

Johnson  said,  "  three  of  them  were  not  bad ;  that 
Milton's  was  a  genius  that  could  hew  a  colossus  out 
of  a  rock,  but  could  not  carve  heads  on  cherry- 
stones." It  is  a  strange  judgment.  If  anything  is  re- 
markable in  Milton's  sonnets  it  is  their  noble  man- 
ner. The  three  controversial  ones,  on  the  Divorce 
Tracts,  and  on  the  Forcers  of  Conscience,  fall  below 
the  stately  level,  but  that  is  to  be  expected.  The  last 
of  these  three  is  forcible  enough,  and  Milton,  as  if  he 
thought  the  subject  transgressed  the  dignity  of  the 
sonnet,  separated  it  from  that  form  of  verse  so  far 
as  to  add  a  tail  to  it.  It  was  a  sonnet  con  coda,  a 
form  used  by  the  Italians  in  satire.  The  two  first 
are  jenx  d*  esprit,  and,  like  all  Milton's  works  of  that 
kind,  awkward  and  lumbering. 

Four  were  written  to  women.  Because  Milton  was 
bitter  against  the  bad  woman  in  Dalila,  because  he  held 
strong  views  on  the  supremacy  of  man,  it  has  been 
too  much  forgotten  how  much  he  loved  and  honoured 
women.  The  Tracts  on  Divorce  speak  of  the  com- 
fort, "ravishment,"  and  support  in  matters  of  love,  in 
home  life,  in  intellectual  conversation,  in  piety,  and 
in  civil  concerns,  which  a  man  may  have  of  a  woman. 
The  "  honoured  wife  of  Winchester  "  earned  his  early 
praise ;  the  Italian  sonnets,  in  the  midst  of  their 
conceits,  seem  to  record  a  real  passion,  though  a 
brief  one,  and  they  are  touched  with  a  dignity  which, 
more  even  than  the  phrases  used,  mark  his  reverence 
for  his  lady.  The  Lady  in  Com  us  will  not  be  used 
to  support  the  theory  that  he  despised  women 
though    he    made    them    inferior    to    men  :    she    is 


?o  MILTON.  [chap. 

as  noble  in  intellect  as  in  purity.  All  through 
Paradise  Lost,  Eve's  intelligence  is  only  less  than 
Adam's :  she  has  many  fine  qualities,  mostly  the 
poetic  ones,  which  Adam  has  not,  and  even  after 
her  fall  the  reverence  of  Adam  for  her  is  insisted  on. 
His  love  for  her  never  fails ;  it  is  made  supreme. 
And  here,  in  the  sonnets,  he  sketches,  with  all  the 
care  and  concentration  the  sonnet  demands,  and  each 
distinctively,  four  beautiful  types  of  womanhood — the 
"  virgin  wise  and  pure"  ;  the  noble  matron,  "  honoured 
Margaret " ;  the  Christian  woman,  his  friend,  whose 
' '  works,  and  alms,  and  good  endeavour  "  followed  her 
to  the  pure  immortal  streams  ;  the  perfect  wife,  whom 
he  looked  to  see  in  heaven — 

"  Love,  sweetness,  goodness,  in  her  person  shine 
So  clear,  as  in  no  face  with  more  delight." 

The  personal  sonnets  have  great  and  solemn  beauty, 
the  beauty  that  belongs  to  the  revelation  of  a  great 
spirit.  We  may  well  compare  the  first  sonnet,  with  its 
quiet  self-confidence,  its  resolved  humility,  its  aspi- 
ration to  perform  the  great  Taskmaster's  work,  with 
the  sonnet  written,  twenty  years  after,  on  his  blindness, 
in  1652.  It  looks  back  over  many  sorrows  and 
tumults  to  the  earlier  one ;  and,  depressed  by  his 
blindness,  he  thinks  how  little  has  been,  and  may 
now  be  done  ;  but  deep  religious  patience  helps  him 
to  think  that  God  works,  and  that 

"  They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait." 

Not  less  noble  in  thought,  not  less  stately  in  expres- 
sion, but  full  of  the  veteran's  consciousness  of  work, 
is  the  sonnet  written  three  years  later  to  Cyriack 
Skinner,  also  on  his  blindness.  He  does  not  bate 
one  jot  of  hope,  but  steers  right  onward.  What 
supports  him — having  lost  his  eyes  ? 

"  The  conscience,  friend,  to  have  lost  them  overpli'd 
In  liberty's  defence,  my  noble  task." 

These  three  sonnets  read  together  and,  dated  1631, 
1652,  1655,  bring  together  three  aspects  of  Milton's 


III.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  71 

nature  and  two  divisions  of  his  life.  The  sonnet 
written  when  the  Assault  was  intended  to  the  City,  and 
three  others,  written  to  Lawes,  and  Mr.  Lawrence,  and 
Cyriack  Skinner,  may  also  be  called  personal.  They 
show  Milton  in  his  artist  nature  as  the  poet  who  knew 
his  own  worth  ;  as  the  lover  of  music  and  as  the 
musician  ;  the  lover  of  Italy,  of  Dante's  poem,  and 
of  Tuscan  airs ;  the  bright  and  tender  friend ;  the 
lover  of  cheerful  society ;  the  lover  of  classic  verse. 
No  sonnets  in  the  English  tongue  come  nearer  than 
those  to  Lawrence  and  Cyriack  Skinner  to  the  mingled 
festivity  and  serious  grace  of  Horace,  and  their  re- 
ligious spirit,  graver  than  that  of  Horace,  makes  them 
Miltonic. 

Of  the  political  sonnets,  the  finest  is  that  to  Cromwell. 
Those  to  Fairfax  and  Vane  are  "noble  odes,"  but 
the  ode  to  Cromwell  is  written  like  an  organ  song 
by  Handel  in  his  triumphant  hour.  More  solemn 
still,  and  justly  called  a  psalm,  is  the  stern  and 
magnificent  summons  to  God  to  avenge  His 
slaughtered  saints,  slain  by  the  bloody  Piedmontese. 
It  is  harsh,  some  have  said;  nay,  it  is  of  great 
Nature  herself:  it  has  "a  voice  whose  sound  is  like 
the  sea." 

Milton,  after  the  Restoration,  lived  for  a  short 
time  in  Holborn,  but  soon  removed  to  Jewin  Street,  in 
Aldersgate.  He  had  lost  a  large  sum  of  money  and 
was  now  poor, 

"  On  evil  days  now  fallen,  and  evil  tongues, 

In  darkness,  and  with  dangers  compassed  round, 
And  evil  tongues." 

He  had  not  much  comfort  from  his  daughters.  The 
two  youngest  were  "  condemned  to  the  performance 
of  reading  and  exactly  pronouncing  of  all  the  languages 
of  whatever  book  he  should  think  fit  to  peruse — a 
trial  of  patience  beyond  endurance;  it  was  endured 
by  both  for  a  time — yet  the  irksomeness  of  this 
employment  could  not  always  be  concealed,  but 
broke  out  more  and  more  into  expressions  of  uneasi- 


72  MILTON.  [chap. 

ness  ;  so  that  at  length  they  were  all,  even  the  eldest 
also,  sent  out  to  learn  embroideries  in  gold  and 
silver."  This  is  Phillips'  account,  and  it  stirs  our 
pity  for  the  children.  But  it  is  plain  from  Milton's 
will,  in  which  he  leaves  the  portion  due  to  him  from 
Mr.  Powell  "to  the  unkind  children"  he  had  by  his 
first  wife,  that  there  was  undutifulness  on  their  side. 
Christopher  Milton  gave  evidence  that  Milton  had 
complained  to  him  that  "  his  daughters  were  careless 
of  him  being  blind,  and  made  nothing  of  deserting 
him."  Elizabeth  Fisher's  evidence  declares  that 
Mary  Milton  had  said,  on  hearing  of  her  father's 
wedding — "that  that  was  no  news,  but  if  she  could 
hear  of  his  death  that  was  something :  "  and  that 
Milton  had  further  told  her,  "  that  all  his  said  children 
did  combine  together  and  counsel  his  maid-servant  to 
cheat  him  in  her  marketings,  and  that  his  children  had 
made  away  some  of  his  books  and  would  have  sold 
the  rest  of  his  books  to  the  dunghill  woman."  It  is  a 
piteous  picture  on  both  sides  of  the  account ;  and  the 
only  spot  of  light  in  it  is  that  his  youngest  daughter 
Deborah,  who  was  Milton's  favourite,  and  who  was 
only  eleven  years  old  when  he  was  in  Jewin  Street, 
may  not  have  been  so  bad  as  the  rest.  She  certainly 
used  to  speak  of  him  with  fond  enthusiasm  when 
she  was  an  old  woman. 

Friends,  however,  still  clung  to  him — Lady  Ranelagh, 
Andrew  Marvel  1,  Marchamont  Needham  the  political 
writer,  young  Lawrence,  Cyriack  Skinner,  Dr.  Paget, 
Edward  Phillips,  his  nephew  who  helped  him  in  his 
literary  work,  and  Thomas  Ellwood  the  Quaker  who 
became  one  of  his  readers.  At  Dr.  Paget's  recom- 
mendation, Milton  now  married,  while  he  was  still  in 
Jewin  Street,  Elizabeth  Minshull,  of  a  good  Cheshire 
family,  a  wise  and  kindly  woman,  who  kept  her  house 
and  her  husband  excellently  well.  Shortly  after  this 
marriage  he  lodged  at  the  house  of  Millington,  the 
bookseller  of  Little  Britain,  who  used  to  "lend  a 
guiding  hand  to  his  dark  steps,"  and  then,  in  1664, 
took  a  house  in  Artillery   Walk,    leading  to  Bunhill 


in]       MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.        73 

Fields,    where    he     remained    ten    years,    until    he 
died. 

Milton's  last  Works. — It  was  here  that  he  com- 
pleted Paradise  Lost  and  wrote  Paradise  Regained  and 
Samson  Agonistes.  During  this  time  he  went  on  with 
and  finished  his  History  of  Britain,  published  in  1669  ; 
his  Treatise  on  Christian  Doctrine,  hereafter  noticed ; 
his  Artis  Logical,  1672  ;  and  his  Latin  Accidence,  1669. 
He  continued  to  work  on  the  collection  of  materials 
for  a  Dictionary  of  the  Latin  Tongue.  In  1673  he 
issued  a  Tract  on  True  Religion,  in  which  I  regret  to 
say  his  toleration  failed  him.  He  urged  Protestants 
to  join  their  forces  against  "  Popery,"  and,  while  they 
refrained  from  punishing  "  the  Papists ;'  in  religion 
or  property,  not  to  tolerate  the  public  or  private 
performance  of  their  rites.  A  compilation,  A  Brief 
History  of  Muscovy,  was  published  after  his  death  in 
1 686=  In  1673  he  republished,  with  some  additions, 
his  early  poems  ;  and  in  the  next  year,  the  year  in 
which  he  died,  his  Familiar  Epistles  in  Latin  appeared, 
and  with  them  the  Academical  Exercises  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  a  translation  of  the  Declaration  of  the 
Poles  on  the  Election  of  John  Sobieski.  This  was  his 
last  literary  work. 

Milton's  Mode  of  Life  during  these  ten  years 
remained  unchanged.  Once,  in  1665,  during  the 
violence  of  the  plague,  he  stayed  in  Buckinghamshire 
in  a  house  taken  for  him  by  Ellwood  at  Chalfont  St. 
Giles.  After  the  Great  Fire  and  the  publication  of 
Paradise  Lost,  his  reputation  grew.  Numbers  of 
visitors  and  foreigners  came  to  see  him,  "much  more 
than  he  did  desire."  Among  the  rest  was  Dryden 
who,  on  reading  the  epic,  broke  out — "  This  man  cuts 
us  all  out,  and  the  ancients  too  !  "  He  received  his 
friends  at  six  in  the  evening  and  talked  to  them  till 
eight.  There  was  then  a  supper  of  olives  or  some 
light  thing,  and  after  supper  he  smoked  his  pipe  and 
drank  a  glass  of  water  and  went  to  bed  at  nine.  He 
rose  early,  at  four  in  summer  and  five  in  winter,  and 
after  listening  to  a  chapter  or  two  in  the  Hebrew  Bible, 


74  MILTON.  [chap. 

"  contemplated "  and  worked  within  himself.  At 
seven  his  man  came  to  him  again  and  then  read  and 
wrote  for  him  till  the  midday  dinner.  After  dinner 
he  used  to  walk  in  his  garden  or  play  on  the  organ, 
and  either  sing  himself  or  make  his  wife  sing,  and 
the  rest  of  the  afternoon  was  given  to  work.  There 
were  daily  about  him  "  persons  of  man's  estate  who 
greedily  catched  at  the  opportunity"  of  reading 
to  him,  of  writing  from  his  dictation,  and  of  assist- 
ing him  in  the  many  references,  books  and  maps  he 
had  to  consult  during  the  composition  of  his  later 
works.  The  old  man,  whose  eyes  seemed  still  clear, 
and  whose  beautiful  hair  still  fell  upon  his  shoulders, 
had  many  helpers,  and  the  house  was  pleasant.  His 
own  talk  was  "  extreme  pleasant,"  intermixed  with 
satirical  humour.  He  was  grave,  though  not  melan- 
choly, or  not  until  the  later  part  of  his  life,  and  had 
"  a  certain  serenity  of  mind,  not  condescending  to 
little  things,"  yet  bright  through  his  sadness,  and  not 
to  be  subdued  with  pain.  "  In  his  gout  fits  he  wrould 
be  very  cheerful,  and  would  sing,"  and  his  daughter 
Deborah  used  to  say  that  he  was  "  delightful 
company  j  the  soul  of  the  conversation,"  on  account 
of  "a  flow  of  subject  and  an  unaffected  cheerfulness 
and  civility."  He  loved  the  "  urbanity  which  com- 
prehends not  only  the  innocent  refinements  and 
elegances  of  conversation,  but  also  acuteness  and 
appropriateness  of  observation  and  reply," 1  and 
Vossius  and  Heinsius  speak  of  his  courteous,  and 
gentle,  and  affable,  and  contented  ways.  He  loved 
hospitality ;  to  have  "  mirth  that  after  no  repenting 
draws,"  to  indulge,  by  the  fire  on  a  sullen  day,  the 
cheerful  hour,  to  have  the  neat  repast 

"  Of  Attic  taste,  with  wine,  whence  we  may  rise 
To  hear  the  lute  well  toucht,  or  artful  voice 
Warble  immortal  notes  and  Tuscan  air. 
He  who  of  these  delights  can  judge,  and  spare 
To  interpose  them  oft,  is  not  unwise." 

1  Christian  Doctrine. 


III.]  MILTON'S  SECRETARYSHIP.  75 

Yet  no  one  could  be  more  temperate.  He  was  very 
sparing  in  the  use  of  wine,  abstemious  in  his  diet,  not 
fastidiously  nice  or  delicate  in  his  choice  of  dishes, 
"eating  and  drinking  that  he  might  live,  not  living 
that  he  might  eat  and  drink."  This  was  his  simple, 
sacred,  happy  way  of  life,  and  out  of  it  grew  the  beau- 
tiful spirit  of  inner  imagination  that  did  not  cease 

"  To  wander  where  the  Muses  haunt 
Clear  spring,  or  shady  grove,  or  sunny  hill, 
Smit  with  the  love  of  sacred  song  ; " 

nor  to  feel  the  celestial  Light  shine  inward,  and 
irradiate  his  mind  through  all  her  powers.  VVe  know 
from  Paradise  Lost  and  Samson  how  deeply  his  blind- 
ness oppressed  his  heart;  how  "an  age  too  late,"  he 
thought,  in  one  of  his  sad  hours,  and  a  "  cold  climate  " 
and  years  had  damped  his  wing ;  how,  cut  off  from 
the  cheerful  ways  of  men,  and  surrounded  by  cloud 
and  ever  during  dark,  he  sorrowed  that  he  could  not 
see 

'  *  Day,  or  the  sweet  approach  of  ev'n  or  morn, 
Or  sight  of  vernal  bloom,  or  summer's  rose, 
Or  flocks,  or  herds,  or  human  face  divine. " 

Nor  less  did  the  state  of  his  country  afflict  him.  He 
fears  for  it,  in  the  close  of  his  History  of  Britain,  the 
revolution  from  like  vices,  without  amendment,  of  like 
calamities  to  those  he  has  described.  His  patriotic 
piety,  has  almost  left  him,  he  says,  without  a  country. 
He  heard  around  him  the  noise  of  Bacchus  and  his 
crew.  But  none  can  read  Paradise  Lost  without  wonder 
at  a  fulness  of  creative  power  which  must  have  made 
him  happy.  He  is  no  object  of  pity.  And  he  had 
great  allies  and  comfort.  He  thought  of  the  old 
t  blind  poets  and  prophets,  and  compared  his  fate, 
and  perhaps  his  fame,  with  theirs  j  nightly  he  visited 
Sion  and  his  flowery  brooks ;  in  his  soul  he  felt  the 
holy  Light,  "its  sovran  vital  lamp;"  the  thoughts 
that  "  voluntary  move  harmonious  numbers "  were 
his  food  :  Urania  led  him,  an  earthly  guest,  into  the 
heaven  of  heavens,  and  when  he  returned  to  earth, 


76  MILTON.  [chap. 

visited  his  slumbers,  unimplored,  and  while  he  slept 
dictated  to  him  and  inspired — 

"  Easy  my  unpremeditated  verse." 

This  was  his  inner  life,  nor  does  the  picture  of  him 
given  to  us  by  an  ancient  clergyman  of  Dorsetshire, 
Dr.  Wright,  lessen  but  rather  enhance  our  sense  of  its 
beauty.  "  He  found  John  Milton,  then  growing  old, 
in  a  small  chamber  hung  with  rusty  green,  sitting  in 
an  elbow  chair,  and  dressed  neatly  in  black  ;  pale,  but 
not  cadaverous  ;  his  hands  and  fingers  gouty,  and  with 
chalk-stones.  He  used  also  to  sit  in  a  gray  coarse 
cloth  coat,  at  the  door  of  his  house  near  Bunhill  Fields, 
in  warm  sunny  weather,  to  enjoy  the  fresh  air.  And 
so,  as  well  as  in  his  room,  he  received  the  visits  of 
people  of  distinguished  parts,  as  well  as  quality." 

Death. — His  gout  was  hereditary,  and  he  died  of 
it,  but  so  peacefully  that  none  knew  the  moment  that 
he  passed  away  on  Sunday,  November  8.  He  was 
buried  beside  his  father,  in  the  chancel  of  St.  Giles, 
Cripplegate,  November  12,  1674.  "All  his  learned 
and  great  friends  in  London,  not  without  a  friendly 
concourse  of  the  vulgar,"  went  with  his  body  to  the 
grave.      So,  at  last  he  joined  himself 

"  With  those  just  spirits  that  wear  victorious  palms." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

PARADISE   LOST. — PARADISE    REGAINED.— SAMSON  AGONISTES. 

Paradise  Lost  was  ready  for  publication  at  the 
end  of  1666.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  per- 
formed his  duty  of  licensing  through  his  chaplains, 
and  the  Rev.  Thomas  Tomkyns,  after  some  hesitation, 
chiefly  caused  by  the  lines  594-599,  Bk.  i.,  where 
the  disastrous  twilight  of  the  sun  "  with  fear  of  change 
perplexes    monarchs,"  placed  his  imprimatur  on  the 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  77 

cover.  On  April  27,  1667,  Samuel  Simmons,  pub- 
lisher, agreed  with  Milton  to  give  him  5/.  for  the  MS., 
and  after  each  of  the  first  four  editions  5/.  more,  each 
edition  reckoning  at  1,300  copies.  The  book  was 
then  published,  August  20 — Paradise  Lost,  a  Poem, 
written  in  Ten  Books,  by  John  Milton.  It  was  a  small 
quarto  of  342  pages,  raised  in  a  subsequent  issue  (there 
were  many  fresh  titles)  to  356  pages  by  the  addition  of 
the  address  of  the  printer  to  the  reader ;  by  Milton's 
preface,  entitled  "  The  Verse  ; "  and  by  the  prose  argu- 
ments to  the  several  books.  The  book,  which  was 
well  got  up  and  printed,  sold  for  3s. — about  7s.  6a1.  of 
our  money — and  the  first  edition  was  exhausted  in 
eighteen  months.  Milton's  receipt  to  Simmons  for  5/. 
more  on  April  26,  1669,  tells  us  that  the  first  edition 
of  his  poem  brought  him  in  exactly  10/.  The  second 
edition,  in  1674,  the  year  of  Milton's  death,  was 
published  in  twelve  books  instead  of  ten.  Three 
new  lines  were  added  to  the  beginning  of  Bk.  viii. 
and  five  to  the  beginning  of  Bk.  xii.  Bks.  vii. 
and  x.  being  each  divided  into  two.  Commendatory 
verses  were  inserted  at  the  beginning  by  Barrow  and 
Marvell,  but  still  greater  praise  than  these  gave  him 
was  given  him  by  John  Dryden,  who,  having  obtained 
leave  from  Milton  "  to  tag  his  verses  "  in  rhyme,  made 
an  opera  out  of  Paradise  Lost  {The  State  of  Lnnocence), 
but  said  in  his  preface  that  the  original  was  undoubt- 
edly one  of  the  greatest,  most  noble,  and  most  sublime 
poems  which  either  this  age  or  nation  has  produced. 
The  third  edition  appeared  in  1678,  and  Simmons,  in 
1680,  paid  Milton's  widow  the  5/.  he  owed  her  since 
1678,  and  3/.  more  "in  full  payment  of  all  my  right, 
title,  or  interest  which  I  have  or  ever  had  in  Paradise 
Lost ; "  that  is  2/.  less  than  his  original  agreement. 
Simmons  sold  his  copyright  to  Aylmer,  who  had 
published  the  Epistolai  Familiares,  who  again  sold  it, 
one  half  in  1683,  and  the  second  half  in  1690,  to 
Jacob  Tonson,  the  well-known  publisher,  who  set  out 
the  fourth  edition,  in  1688,  by  subscription  ;  the  third 
book,  they  say,  so  published  in  England.      All  the 


78  MILTON.  [chap. 

best  men  of  the  day  subscribed,  Dryden  and  Somers 
being  foremost  in  the  work.  It  was  in  this  edition 
that,  under  White's  portrait  of  Milton,  Dryden  wrote 
the  lines  so  often  quoted  : — 

"  Three  Poets  in  three  distant  ages  born, 
Greece,  Italy,  and  England,  did  adorn. 
The  first  in  loftiness  of  thought  surpassed  ; 
The  next  in  majesty  ;  in  both  the  last : 
The  force  of  nature  could  no  further  go  : 
To  make  a  third  she  joined  the  former  two."  l 

The  sixth  edition  was  made  remarkable  by  the  anno- 
tations of  Patrick  Hume,  and  it  was  after  the  ninth 
that  Addison's  criticisms  in  the  Saturday  Spectators 
from  January  to  May,  17 12,  excited  a  wider  interest 
in  the  poem.  Since  then  the  editions  are  too 
numerous  to  mention.  The  poets  Tickell  and  Fenton 
edited  it,  the  latter  with  a  pleasant  life.  Bentley  edited 
it,  and,  under  the  supposition  that  Milton's  amanuensis 
made  mistakes  in  spelling  and  in  words,  inserted 
whole  sentences,  and  amended  it  in  his  own  fashion, 
"  a  supposition  rash  and  groundless,  if  he  thought  it 
true ;  and  vile  and  pernicious,  if,  as  is  said,  he  in 
private  allowed  it  to  be  false."  Bishop  Newton's 
edition  is  with  notis  variorum.  It  is  superseded  by 
Todd's  edition,  and  by  Mr.  Thomas  Keightley's,  and 
Mr.  R.  C.  Browne's,  all  of  them  books  well  worth 
consulting.  The  last  edition  is  one  to  which  all 
who  love  Milton  are  deeply  indebted,  and  the 
writer  of  this  little  Primer  especially — Milton's  Poetical 
Works,  by  David  Mas  son. 

Mode  of  Composition. — We  have  seen  in  the 
course  of  this  book  how  the  thought  of  a  great  epic 
grew  up  in  Milton's  mind,  and  how,  between  1640-42, 
Paradise  Lost,  conceived  as  a  drama,  was  present  to 
his  eyes.     Four  different  drafts  of  it  exist,  and  I  have 

1  The  thought  is  borrowed    from   Selvaggi's   complimentary 
lines : — 

"  Graecia  Moeonidem  jactet  sibi,  Roma  Maronem  ; 
Anglia  Miltonum  jactat  utrique  parem." 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  79 

already  mentioned  that  the  lines — Bk.  iv.,  32-41 — 
were  written  about  1642,  and  were  designed  for  the 
beginning  of  the  tragedy.  At  the  age  of  fifty,  at  the 
close  of  the  Protectorate,  1658,  he  began  the  poem  in 
the  house  in  Petty  France,  and  all  but  completed  it, 
according  to  Aubrey,  in  1663.  It  was  in  1665  that 
he  showed  it,  finished,  to  Ellwood  the  Quaker ;  the 
two  years  being  probably  spent  in  correcting  and 
revising  it.  The  Plague  and  the  Fire  delayed  its 
publication  till  1667.  It  was  composed  at  intervals 
and  dictated  to  his  two  younger  daughters,  or  to  his 
wife,  or  to  any  amanuensis  that  happened  to  be  near. 
"  I  had  the  perusal  of  it,"  says  Phillips,  "  from  the  very 
beginning — in  a  parcel  of  ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  verses 
at  a  time,  which,  being  written  by  whatever  hand 
came  next,  might  possibly  want  correction  as  to  the 
orthography  and  pointing ;  and  having,  as  the  summer 
came  on,  not  being  showed  any  for  a  considerable 
while,  and  desiring  the  reason  thereof,  was  answered 
that  his  vein  never  happily  flowed  but  from  the 
Autumnal  Equinoctial  to  the  Vernal,  and  that  what- 
ever he  attempted  at  other  times  was  never  to  his  satis- 
faction, though  he  exerted  his  fancy  never  so  much, 
so  that,  in  all  the  years  he  was  about  this  poem,  he 
may  be  said  to  have  spent  but  half  his  time  therein." 
Richardson  the  painter  has  handed  down  some 
further  details.  That  when  he  dictated,  as  we  have 
seen,  not  only  to  his  daughters,  but  to  any  one  at 
hand — he  sat  leaning  backward  obliquely  in  an  easy 
chair,  with  his  leg  flung  over  the  elbow  of  it.  That 
he  frequently  composed  in  bed  on  a  morning — that 
when  he  could  not  sleep,  but  lay  awake  whole  nights, 
he  tried,  but  not  one  verse  could  he  make.  At  other 
times  flowed  " '  easy  his  unpremeditated  verse,'  with 
a  certain  impetus  and  cestro,  as  himself  seemed  to 
believe.  Then,  at  what  hour  soever,  he  rung  for  his 
daughter  to  secure  what  came.  I  have  also  been 
told  he  could  dictate  many,  perhaps  forty,  lines,  in  a 
breath,  and  then  reduce  them  to  half  the  number." 
The  Verse  is  blank  verse,  the  unrhymed  metre  of 
6 


80  MILTON.  [chap. 

five  accents  and  ten  syllables,  first  used  by  Surrey  in 
his  translation  of  the  Fourth  ^Eneid.     When  Milton 
says  in  his  preface  that  his  neglect  of  rhyme  is  an 
"  example  set,  the  first  in  English,  of  ancient  liberty 
recovered  to  heroic  poem,"  he  either  did  not  know  of 
Surrey's  effort,  which  would  be  strange,  or  he  chose 
to  disdain  it  as  a  translation.     It  had  long  been  the 
habit  to  use  blank  verse  in  the  drama,  and  Milton 
had  done  it  already  in  the   Comus.     In  the  drama 
many  licences  were  permitted,  nay,  encouraged,  and 
Milton  uses  these  in  Comus,  and  with  more  freedom 
still  in  Samson  Agonistes.     He  keeps  within  stricter 
limits  in  the  narrative  blank  verse  of  Paradise  Lost  and 
Regained,  but  he  does  use,  in  varying  quantity  through 
these  books — a  quantity  varying  towards  increase  in 
the  parts  where  dialogue  occurs — the  "weak  ending" 
of  an  additional  svllable,  and  he  admits  feet  of  three 
syllables  with  frequency  into  his  lines,  instead  of  the 
regular  iambus.     Sometimes,  but  very  rarely,  he  ad- 
mits two  feet  of  three  syllables,  lengthening  his  line 
thus   to   twelve   syllables.     And  of  course  he  uses, 
exactly  as   he  thought  most  fit,  the  trochee,  or  the 
spondee,  instead  of  the  iambus,  in  the  ordinary  line  of 
ten  syllables.     His  stops  occur  most  frequently  at  the 
end  of  the  third  foot,  but  they  are  fixed,  according  to 
his  sense  of  poetic  fitness,  at  the  end  of  any  of  the  ten 
syllables,  and  all  who  care  for  blank  verse  would  do 
well  to  study  them  where  they  occur,  and  to  ask  the 
reason   Milton  chose  then  and  there  to  place  them. 
Their  frequent  change  gives  great  variety  to  the  verse, 
and  often  great   beauty  and  force ;    but  the  variety 
is  sometimes  dearly  bought,  and  then  we  reluctantly 
remember  Johnson's  judgment,  that  this  way  of  pro- 
ducing variety  changes  the  measures  of  a  poet  to  the 
periods  of  a  declaimer.     When  Milton  recommended 
that  "the  sense  should  be  variously  drawn  out  from 
one  verse  to  another,"  he  recommended  an  excellent 
thing,  but  he  made  very  large  demands  on  his  principle. 
It  is  almost  impossible  sometimes  to  distinguish,  on 
hearing  them,  where  Milton's  lines  begin  or  end,  and 


iv.]  TARADISE  LOST.  81 

when  that  is  the  case,  the  fit  idea  of  blank  verse  is 
wronged.  There  is  a  natural  pause  at  the  end  of  a 
line,  and  it  ought  not  to  be  in  the  midst  of  a  word, 
nor  should  it  separate  a  qualifying  word  from  the 
word  qualified — a  substantive  from  its  adjective,  a 
preposition  from  the  words  it  governs,  a  personal 
pronoun  from  the  verb  that  governs  it,  and  into  these 
faults,  though  rarely,  Milton  falls  in  his  passion  for 
variety.  The  natural  pause  in  the  middle  of  the 
verse  in  strictness  obeys  the  same  rules,  but  some 
have  doubted  its  existence,  and,  at  any  rate,  it  has 
been  so  played  with,  that  there  is  nothing  to  blame  in 
Milton's  constant  violation  of  its  rules,  rules  which,  if 
carried  out,  would  too  much  fetter  the  movement  of 
blank  verse. 

When  he  demanded  for  true  musical  delight  not 
only  the  sense  variously  drawn  out  from  one  verse 
to  another,  but  also  "apt  numbers  and  fit  quantities  of 
syllables,"  he  was  thinking  of  his  own  practice.  His 
apt  numbers  are  well  dwelt  on  by  Dr.  Guest.  "  Per- 
haps no  man  ever  paid  the  same  attention  to  the 
quality  of  his  rhythm  as  Milton.  What  other  poets 
effect,  as  it  were  by  chance,  Milton  achieved  by  the 
aid  of  science  and  art ;  he  studied  the  aptness  of  his 
numbers,  and  diligently  tutored  an  ear  which  nature 
had  gifted  with  the  most  delicate  sensibility.  In  the 
flow  of  his  rhythm,  in  the  quality  of  his  letter  sounds, 
in  the  disposition  of  his  pauses,  his  verse  almost  ever 
fits  the  subject  and  so  insensibly  does  poetry  blend 
with  this — the  last  beauty  of  exquisite  versification — 
that  the  reader  may  sometimes  doubt  whether  it  be 
the  thought  itself,  or  merely  the  happiness  of  its 
expression,  which  is  the  source  of  a  gratification  so 
deeply  felt." 

As  to  the  "fit  quantities  of  syllables,"  I  con- 
jecture that  Milton  meant  that  in  every  line  it  was 
enough  if  the  requisite  number  of  accents  were  found, 
within  the  fair  limits  of  the  variety  allowed  to  blank 
verse.  He  stretched  those  limits  sometimes  to  their 
utmost  extent,  but  when  he  did  so  it  was  not  from 


82  MILTON.  [chap, 

laziness  or  from  an  oversight.  We  may  be  quite  cer- 
tain that  when  so  great  an  artist  in  verse,  as  Milton, 
was  writing,  lines  which  seem  to  us  unmusical  were 
made  so  with  a  purpose,  and  that  we  cannot  rashly 
condemn  them  until  we  know  his  purpose.  He  in- 
sists on  accents  that  seem  to  us  most  strangely  put, 
in  order  that  we  may  understand  his  thought  more 
clearly ;  in  order  that  he  may  express  his  thoughts  in 
a  very  brief  compass ;  in  order  that  he  may  make 
some  particular  thought  or  particular  thing  in  his 
description  emphatic.  Take  one  of  the  least  musical 
lines  in  Milton,  the  last  line  of  Paradise  Regained, 
and  accent  and  read  it  thus  : — 

"  Home— to  his  mother's  house— private— returned.5' 

It  seems  impossible  to  have  pleasure  in  the  awkward 
verse;  but  Milton  wished  to  put  all  these  thoughts 
and  facts  into  one  line,  and  he  did  it  by  his  accents. 
Take  two  other  well-known  lines  and  read  them  as 
accented  underneath — and  they  are  as  fine  as  possible. 

"  An'd— Tiresias  and  Phineus— prophets  old." 
"  Burnt — after  them,  to  the  bottomless  pit." 

It  has  been  said  that  the  following  line  has  more 
than  five  accents  ;  but  Milton  meant  it  to  have  only 
five.  The  accent  in  each  of  the  three  first  couples 
marks  that  the  description  of  the  several  kinds  of 
similar  things  ceases — 

"  Rocks,  caves— lakes,  fens— bogs,  dens— and  shapes  of  death." 

In  every  case,  especially  where  one  word  of  one  syllable 
is  dwelt  on  so  as  to  have  the  value  of  two  syllables, 
the  reader  is  called  on  by  Milton  to  find  meaning  in 
his  accentuation  ;  nor  do  I  know  of  a  single  instance 
in  which  the  rule  of  five  accents  is  really  violated : 
though  there  are  thousands  of  instances  in  which  the 
accents  are  placed  with  a  freedom,  an  audacity,  an 
absolute  carelessness  of  mere  rule  which  are  only 
lawful  to  a  great  artist.     Nor  may  he  use  this  license 


IV.]  PARADISE  LOST.  83 

unless  he  happens  to  be  writing  at  a  white  heat  of 
imagination,  and  Milton,  more  cool  in  Paradise  Re- 
gained than  in  Paradise  Lost,  fails  in  music  when  he 
is  over  reckless  in  metre.  We  do  not  complain,  we 
are  delighted  with  the  daring  of 

"  Shook  the  arsenal, — and  fulmined  over  Greece," 
but  we  do  complain,  and  justly,  of  lines  like  these — 

"  But  to  vanquish  by  wisdom  hellish  wiles," 

***** 

"  Such  solitude  before  choicest  society." 

There  is  all  the  difference  between  the  first  and  the 
two  last  lines  that  is  made  by  the  imagination  on  fire, 
and  the  imagination  asleep  or  exhausted. 

The  Style  is  always  great.  On  the  whole  it  is 
the  greatest  in  the  whole  range  of  English  poetry,  so 
great  that  when  once  we  have  come  to  know  and 
honour  and  love  it,  it  so  subdues  the  judgment  that 
the  judgment  can  with  difficulty  do  its  work  with 
temperance.  It  lifts  the  low,  gives  life  to  the  com- 
monplace, dignifies  even  the  vulgar,  and  makes  us 
endure  that  which  is  heavy  and  dull.  We  catch  our- 
selves admiring  things  not  altogether  worthy  of 
admiration,  because  the  robe  they  wear  is  so  royal. 
No  style,  when  one  has  lived  in  it,  is  so  spacious  and 
so  majestic  a  place  to  walk  in.  It  is  like  the  fig-tree 
he  describes,  which 

"  In  Malabar  or  Decan  spreads  her  arms 
Branching  so  broad  and  long,  that  in  the  ground 
The  bending  twigs  take  root,  and  daughters  grow 
About  the  mother  tree,  a  pillared  shade 
High  overarcht,  and  echoing  walks  between." 

Fulness  of  sound,  weight  of  march,  compactness  of 
finish,  fitness  of  words  to  things,  fitness  of  pauses  to 
thought,  a  strong  grasp  of  the  main  idea  while  other 
ideas  play  round  it,  power  of  digression  without  loss  of 
the  power  to  return,  equality  of  power  over  vast  spaces 
of  imagination,  sustained  splendour  when  he  soars 

"With  plume  so  strong,  so  equal  and  so  soft," 


84  MILTON.  [chap. 

a  majesty  in  the  conduct  of  thought,  and  a  music  in 
the  majesty  which  fills  it  with  solemn  beauty,  belong 
one  and  all  to  the  style  ;  and  it  gains  its  highest 
influence  on  us,  and  fulfils  the  ultimate  need  of 
a  grand  style  in  being  the  easy  and  necessary  ex- 
pression of  the  very  character  and  nature  of  the  man. 
It  reveals  Milton,  as  much,  sometimes  even  more 
than  his  thought. 

It  has  its  faults.  It  is  often,  not  only  needlessly, 
but  as  it  were  of  set  purpose,  involved;  "not  dense 
merely,  but  contorted  or  gnarled  in  structure,"  as 
Mr.  Masson,  with  regard  to  certain  passages,  well 
says.  It  loses  freedom  of  movement  in  its  involu- 
tions ;  it  delays  too  long,  as  it  winds  in  and  out, 
to  express  the  thought  or  the  image ;  it  is  rarely 
brief,  even  where  brevity  would  be  the  life  of  thought. 
It  is  troubled  with  ellipses,  and  the  inversions  are 
sometimes,  even  when  they  are  deliberate,  weari- 
some. The  Latinisms  and  forms  of  expression 
belonging  to  other  languages  are  frequent,  and  have 
been  much  blamed,  but  they  are  a  true  part  of  the 
style,  and  the  natural  property  of  the  man.  But 
blame  as  we  like,  one  thing  is  true,  the  style  is 
never  prosaic.  The  poetic  form  was  Milton's  native 
tongue. 

The  Cosmography. — The  Universe  in  Paradise 
Lost  consists  of  Heaven  or  the  Empyrean,  of  Hell,  of 
Chaos,  and  of  our  World. 

Heaven  is  on  high,  indefinitely  extended,  and  walled 
towards  Chaos  with  a  crystal  wall,  having  opal  towers 
and  sapphire  battlements.  In  the  wall  a  vast  gate 
opens  on  Chaos,  and  from  it  runs  a  broad  and 
ample  road,  "  powdered  with  stars,"  whose  dust  is  gold, 
to  the  throne  of  God.  The  throne  is  in  the  midst  of 
Heaven,  high  on  the  sacred  hill,  lost  in  ineffable  light. 
In  the  hill  is  a  cave  whence  the  alternate  light  and 
shade  of  Heaven  proceed,  for  the  angels  rest  in  sleep 
and  wake  to  work.  Around  the  hill  is  the  vast  plain 
clothed  with  flowers,  watered  by  living  streams  among 
the  trees  of  life,  where   on  great   days    the    angelic 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  85 

assembly  meets ;  and  nearer  to  the  hill  is  the  pave- 
ment like  a  sea  of  jasper.  Beyond,  are  vast  regions, 
where  are  the  blissful  bowers  of  "  amarantine  shade, 
fountain,  or  spring  ; "  among  which  in  fellowships 
of  joy  sit  the  sons  of  light.  The  trees  bear  ambrosial 
fruitage  and  the  vines  nectar ;  the  ground  is  covered 
each  morn  with  pearly  rain  and  the  boughs  with  mel- 
lifluous dews.  In  the  midst  is  the  Fount  of  Life, 
shaded  by  the  leaves  and  flowers  of  the  Tree  of  Life, 
that  also  grows 

— "  where  the  river  of  Bliss  through  midst  of  Heav'n 
Rolls  o'er  Elysian  flow'rs  her  amber  stream." 

These  regions  extend  infinitely,  as  varied  in  landscape 
as  the  earth — tree-clad  hills  and  vales,  woods,  streams 
and  plains  ;  and  among  them  the  archangels  have 
their  royal  seats  built  as  Satan's  was,  far-blazing  on  a 
hill,  of  diamond  quarries  and  of  golden  rocks. 

Chaos  is  opened  on  by  the  great  gate.     It  is  a 
a  vast  immeasurable  abyss — 

"  Outrageous  as  a  sea,  dark,  wasteful,  wild, 
Up  from  the  bottom  turned  by  furious  winds 
And  surging  waves." 

Hot,  cold,  moist,  and  dry  strive  here  for  mastery.  It 
is  "  the  womb  of  Nature,  and  perhaps  her  grave." — 
Noises  loud  and  ruinous  fill  it,  but  the  loudest  noise 
is  where,  on  its  frontiers,  towards  Heaven,  Chaos  and 
his  consort  Night,  amid  the  warring  elements,  keep 
their  pavilion. 

Hell  lies  in  the  depths  of  Chaos,  a  fall  of  nine  days 
and  nights  from  Heaven.  In  its  midst,  and  it  is  con- 
ceived as  circular,  is  the  bottomless  lake  of  fire, 
into  which  pour  the  four  rivers,  Acheron,  Phlegeton, 
Styx,  and  Cocytus.  Around  the  lake  a  vast  space 
of  dry  land  extends,  formed  of  solid  fire,  in  one  of 
whose  hills  Pandemonium  was  formed  entire,  and 
rose  out  of  it,  when  formed,  like  an  exhalation. 
The  City  of  Hell  is  afterwards  built  round  Pande- 
monium on  this  dry  ground  of  fire,  and  the  country 
round  the  city  is  broken  with  rock,  and  valley,  and 


86  MILTON.  [chap. 

hill,  and  plain.  Further  on,  in  another  concentric 
band,  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  a  desert  land,  seemingly 
moist,  but  giving  no  relief ;  full  of  rocks,  caves,  lakes, 
fens,  bogs,  dens,  and  shades  of  death,  round  which 
Lethe,  like  the  fabled  Ocean  stream,  flows  in  a  circle, 
and  environs  Hell.     After  that  is  the  realm  of  cold, 

"  Beyond  this  flood,  a  frozen  continent 
Lies  dark  and  wild,  beat  with  perpetual  storms 
Of  whirlwind  and  dire  hail — " 

a  land  of  snow  and  ice,  deep  as  the  Serbonian  bog, 
over  which  Satan  soars  high  on  his  way  to  the  gate, 
and  the  cold  of  which  is  as  fire.  Then  come  the 
bounds  of  Hell,  and  the  three-folded  gates.  Over  all 
is  the  concave  vault  of  fire.  This  is  Milton's  geo- 
graphy of  Hell,  within  four  concentric  circles. 

Our  World  as  Milton  calls  it,  the  whole  solar  sys- 
tem and  the  stars,  is  linked  to  Heaven  and  to  Hell, 
and  in  Chaos.  It  is  a  vast  hollow  sphere,  hung  at 
its  zenith  by  a  golden  chain  from  the  Empyrean. 
Its  lowest  point  is  distant  from  Hell  as  far  as  one  of 
its  radii  extend.  It  is  this  dark  globe  that  Satan 
sees  from  Chaos,  by  the  light  of  Heaven,  and  on  its 
outer  round  he  alights,  as  on  a  continent  of  waste 
land.  It  is  beaten  by  the  winds  of  Chaos  and  has 
only  light  on  that  side  of  it  which  is  turned  to  Heaven. 
At  its  very  zenith  a  bright  sea  flows  as  of  liquid 
pearl,  from  which  a  mighty  structure  of  stairs  leads 
up  to  Heaven's  gate.  Over  against  the  stairs  a  passage 
down  to  the  Earth  opens  into  the  hollow  sphere.  At 
this  opening  Satan  looks  in  upon  the  starry  heavens 
of  all  this  world,  which  fill  the  "  calm  firmament,"  and 
flies  amongst  innumerable  stars  to  the  Sun  and  thence 
to  Earth  the  central  point  of  the  nine  spheres. 

Milton  accepts  then  for  his  poetic  uses  the  Ptole- 
maic system,  of  which  the  earth  was  the  centre. 
Around  the  Earth  revolved  the  spheres  of  the  Seven 
Planets,  the  Moon,  Mercury,  Venus,  the  Sun,  Mars, 
Jupiter,  and  Saturn.  The  eighth  sphere  was  the 
firmament  of  the  Fixed  Stars,  the  ninth  or  Crystal- 


IV.]  PARADISE  LOST.  87 

line  Sphere,  was  inclosed  in  the  tenth  the  Primum 
Mobile  or  the  First  Moved,  the  last  of  the  hollow 
shell.  They  all  circled  round  the  Earth  with  "  a 
complex  combination  of  their  separate  motions  in- 
vented to  explain  the  phenomena  of  the  heavens." 
This  is  Milton's  "  World."  When  the  souls  who 
are  destined  to  the  Paradise  of  Fools  fly  upwards, 
Bk.  iii.  481, 

"  They  pass  the  planets  seven,  and  pass  the  fixed, 
And  that  crystalline  sphere  whose  balance  weighs 
The  trepidation  talked,  and  that  first  moved." 

He  uses  this  scheme  because  it  suited  his  poetic 
imagination,  and  because  it  was  the  scheme  accepted 
by  his  youth.  But  he  had  seen  Galileo  in  1638,  and 
says  he  "was  a  prisoner  to  the  Inquisition  for  think- 
ing in  astronomy  otherwise  than  the  Franciscan  and 
Dominician  licensers  thought,"  and  more  than  twenty 
years  afterwards,  during  which  one  may  suppose  he 
did  not  neglect  to  gain  knowledge,  he  makes  Raphael 
sketch  for  Adam  the  Copernican  system  (viii.  15-178) 
and  shows  his  own  knowledge  of  it  in  (iv.  592-97). 
The  angel  hints  that  the  question  is  obscure,  but  it 
is  plain  that  whatever  Milton  professed,  Raphael 
followed  Copernicus.  The  Ptolemaic  system  is  not 
adopted  then  by  Milton  because  he  held  it  to  be  the 
clearly  right  view  of  the  universe,  but  because  it  was 
suited  to  his  poetical  wants.  Lastly,  as  this  vast  sphere 
was  linked  to  Heaven  by  its  chain  and  staircase, 
so  it  was  linked  to  Hell  by  the  mighty  causeway 
which  Sin  and  Death  had  beaten  together  out  of 
Chaos ;  high  arched,  and  made  fast  with  pins  of  ada- 
mant and  chains  to  the  outside  base  of  this  round 
world. 

The  Christian  Doctrine. — The  views  of  Mil- 
ton in  theology  and  religion  at  the  time  when  he  wrote 
Paradise  Lost  are  of  importance  towards  the  critical 
understanding,  even  towards  the  poetic  appreciation 
of  the  poem.  They  are  contained  in  the  treatise  on 
Christian  Doctrine,  which  was  written  at  the  close  of 


88  MILTON.  [chap. 

his  life  and  finished  after  the  Restoration.  To  read  it 
is  to  know,  and  with  great  exactness,  the  views  he 
held  at  the  time  when  he  was  composing  Paradise 
Lost.  This  treatise,  entrusted  to  Cyriack  Skinner  by 
Milton,  along  with  a  collection  of  his  letters  to  foreign 
princes  and  states,  was  not  published  in  his  lifetime. 
Daniel  Skinner  tried  in  1676  to  induce  Elzevir  to  print 
it,  but  he  declined.  The  papers  were  then  taken  away, 
and  fell,  we  know  not  how,  into  the  hands  of  the  Home 
Secretary.  In  1823  they  were  found  in  one  of  the 
presses  of  the  Old  State- Paper  Office,  Whitehall,  in- 
closed in  an  envelope — "  To  Mr.  Skinner,  Merchant "  ; 
and  shortly  after,  search  being  made,  letters  were 
found  which  proved  the  authenticity  of  the  work. 

It  was  the  result  of  the  labour  of  several  years,  of 
"constant  diligence  and   an    unwearied   search  after 
truth ;  "  and  it  embodies  the  final  principles  of  Milton's 
belief.    He  had  written  on  the  "  three  species  of  liberty 
— religious,  domestic,  and  civil."     The  preface  of  this 
treatise  declares  that  the  Church  cannot  be  disturbed 
by  the  investigation  of  truth.    It  is  his  object  to  "  make 
it  to  appear  of  how  much  consequence  to  the  Chris- 
tian religion  is  the  liberty  not  only  of  winnowing  and 
sifting  every  doctrine,  but  also   of  thinking  and  even 
writing  respecting  it,  according  to  our  individual  faith 
and  persuasion.     Without  this  liberty  there  is  neither 
religion  nor  gospel — force    alone   prevails — by  which 
it   is    disgraceful    for    the     Christian    religion   to    be 
supported.     Without  this  liberty  we  are  still  enslaved 
....  under  the  law  of  man,  or  to  speak  more  truly, 
under  a  barbarous  tyranny."     These  are  words  which 
seem   to   anticipate    the    Latitudinarians,  and   claim 
individual  reason,    exercised  on  the  Scriptures  with 
absolute   freedom    of  discussion  and  inquiry,  as  the 
sole  judge  in  matters  of  faith.      Theological  liberty 
was  the  last  "  species  of  liberty"  Milton  defended  and 
exacted,  and  that  he  did  it  in  his  old  age  proves  that 
he  had  not   degenerated.     It  would  be  useless  and 
impossible  to  go  through  this  long  treatise,  and  we  are 
not  investigating  the  theology  of  Milton ;  but  there 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  89 

are  opinions  laid  down  in  it  which  concern  the  criticism 
and  comprehension  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  Paradise 
Regained,  and  Samson  Agonistes,  and  I  shall  make  short 
statements  of  these  opinions.     Milton  holds  : — 

1.  That  God,  as  far  as  we  are  concerned  to  know, 
is  of  the  form  which  He  attributes  to  Himself  in  the 
sacred  writings,  and  that  He  feels  as  He  is  there 
represented  to  do.  The  presentation  then  of  the 
Father  in  Paradise  Lost  is  not  only  poetical,  but 
actually  as  Milton  conceived  it. 

2.  God  decreed  nothing  absolutely  which  He  left 
in  the  power  of  free  agents.  God  foreknew  that 
Adam  would  fall  of  his  own  free  will.  His  fall  was 
therefore  certain,  but  not  necessary,  since  it  proceeded 
from  his  own  free  will,  which  is  incompatible  with 
necessity. 

3.  All  men  are  generally  predestinated  to  eternal 
life — on  condition  of  faith  in  Christ.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  eternal  reprobation  or  eternal  pretention. 
Predestination  then  is  not  only  of  grace,  but  also  ot 
the  will  and  belief  of  men,  and  all  men  are  given 
sufficient  grace  to  believe,  if  they  will.  Both  these 
(2  and  3)  will  be  found  underlying  Paradise  Lost  and 
Paradise  Regained. 

4.  The  Son  of  God  existed  before  the  world  was 
made,  but  was  not  co-eternal  with  the  Father ;  nor 
co-essential ;  nor  co-equal.  He  is  not  in  any  sense 
the  supreme  God ;  His  nature  and  power  are  divine, 
but  the  nature  is  given  and  the  power  delegated. 
Nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  Milton  was  a 
deliberate  Arian.  The  argument  is  long,  laborious, 
and  resolute.  That  he  was  an  Arian,  makes  passage 
after  passage  in  Paradise  Lost  and  Paradise  Regained 
clear.  He  did  not  dramatise  heaven,  as  some  have 
said,  by  dividing  the  Father  and  the  Son.  They 
were  two  Persons  to  him. 

5.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  a  minister  of  God,  a  creature, 
created  of  the  substance  of  God,  probably  before  the 
foundations  of  the  world  were  laid,  but  later  than  the 
Son  and  inferior  to  Him. 


96  MILTON.  [chap. 

6.  Matter  was  produced  out  of  God,  not  out  of 
nothing,  and  of  this  productive  stock,  in  itself  a 
substance  and  intrinsically  good,  all  things  were 
made ;  that  is,  form  was  given  to  them,  for  the  thing 
itself  is  matter  and  form.  Creation  out  of  nothing  is 
untrue,  and  since  all  things  are  thus  of  God,  no 
created  thing  can  be  finally  annihilated. 

7.  Souls  are  not  pre-existent ;  the  soul  and  the 
body  are  not  two  distinct  things.  The  whole  man  is 
soul,  and  the  soul  man,  an  animated,  sensitive,  and 
rational  substance.  The  spirit  of  man  is  partly  human, 
but  is  inspired  from  God,  and  therefore  is  called  the 
divine  virtue,  fitted  for  the  exercise  of  life  and 
reason,  which  is  infused  into  the  organic  body.  In 
each  man  the  soul  is  born,  and  is  produced  by  the 
power  of  matter. — If  we  keep  these  definitions  in 
mind,  much  that  is  obscure  in  Milton  will  become 
clear. 

8.  The  sin  which  is  common  to  all  men  is  that 
which  our  first  parents,  and  in  them  all  their  posterity, 
committed,  when,  casting  off  their  obedience  to  God, 
they  tasted  the  fruit  of  the  forbidden  tree. 

9.  Its  result  is  death.  Death  is,  first,  guiltiness ; 
Adam's  shame  is  death.  It  is,  secondly,  the  loss  of 
the  right  reason  by  which  men  discern  the  chief  good. 
It  is,  thirdly,  the  death  of  the  body :  not  the  sepa- 
ration of  soul  and  body,  but  the  death  of  the  soul, 
and  the  spirit,  and  the  body ;  the  death  of  the  whole 
man. — All  these  three  die,  and  all  are  raised  together 
at  the  resurrection.  It  is,  fourthly,  eternal  death,  the 
punishment  of  the  lost. — These  are  the  four  degrees 
of  death,  but  the  second  does  not  exclude  certain 
remnants  of  the  divine  image  which  are  left  in  us,  and 
not  extinguished.  For  "  if  our  personal  religion  were 
not  in  some  degree  dependent  on  us,  and  in  our  own 
power,  God  could  not  properly  enter  into  covenant 
with  us,  neither  could  we  perform,  much  less  swear 
to  perform,  the  conditions  of  that  covenant." 

10.  Christ  satisfied  God's  justice  by  fulfilling  the  law, 
and  paying  the  required  price  for  all  mankind. 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  91 

"  Die  he,  or  Justice  must  ;  unless  for  him 
Some  other  able,  and  as  willing,  pay 
The  rigid  satisfaction,  death  for  death. 

.  So  Man,  as  is  most  just, 
Shall  satisfy  for  Man,  be  judged  and  die." 

n.  There  is  in  Christ  the  union  of  two  natures; 
but  the  divine  nature  is  not  of  the  same  essence  as  the 
Father,  and  the  divine  nature  was  in  partial  abeyance 
during  his  life  on  earth.  Being  a  creature,  this  divine 
Person  was  capable  of  temptation  and  of  fall. 

12.  The  decalogue  is  abrogated  and  is  not  binding 
on  Christians.  This  may  account  for  the  omission 
of  it  in  the  Vision  of  Bk.  xii.  Milton  was  a  strong 
anti-Sabbatarian. 

13.  Christ  will  reign  on  the  earth  during  the  times 
of  the  Last  Judgment. 

14.  The  world  will  be  burnt  up  at  the  end;  heaven 
and  earth  will  be  renewed  in  purity,  and  possessed  in 
perpetuity  of  delight  by  the  saints. 

15.  From  the  subjection  of  the  body,  as  from  a 
fountain,  the  special  virtues  in  general  derive  their 
origin. 

16.  Marriage  was  indissoluble  before  the  Fall. 
Since  then,  divorce,  nay,  even  polygamy,  are  lawful ; 
fitting  cause  being  shown.  The  man  has  absolute 
rule  over  the  woman. 

It  is  plain  from  many  of  these  propositions  that  to 
call  Milton  Calvinistic  is  absurd. 

The  Interest  of  Paradise  Lost  is  partly 
connected  with  its  theology.  The  form  of  the  poem  is 
the  epic  form  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  and  one  of 
its  interests  as  a  work  of  art  is  Milton's  conduct  of  the 
epic.  The  filling  up  of  the  form  is  partly  invented  and 
partly  derived  from  Scripture.  The  character  and 
the  greater  part  of  the  action  are  invented  ;  but  the 
part  derived  from  Scripture  has  a  theological  system 
attached  to  it.  It  is  a  true  objection  which  says  that 
this  scheme  of  theology,  so  far  as  it  intrudes,  lessens 
the  interest  of  the  poem.  It  is  not  a  true  objection 
which  says  that  it  destroys  that  interest.     And  it  is  not 


92  MILTON.  [chap. 

its  presence,  but  its  presence  in  an  argumentative  form, 
which  is  alien  to  art.  It  chiefly  appears  in  the  talk  of 
the  heavenly  persons,  and  in  their  lips  it  is  necessarily 
divorced  from  the  human  passions  which,  when  they 
play  round  a  theological  scheme,  add  to  its  interest. 
And  the  scheme,  in  itself,  is  abstract  and  logical  and 
as  such  repugnant  to  art.  One  thing,  however,  be- 
longing to  the  theology  has  grandeur,  and  is  capable 
of  artistic  treatment.  It  broods  over  all  these  parts 
of  the  poem  with  its  vast  wings.  It  is  the  con- 
ception deepest  in  Puritanism  and  the  source  of  its 
power — the  overshadowing  idea  of  the  sovereignty  of 
God.  In  the  great  struggle,  God  is  always  certain 
of  victory. 

The  Political  Interest  of  the  Poem  belongs  to 
this  idea.  God's  sovereignty  makes  all  other  sove- 
reignty and  power  nothing.  A  Puritan  could  not  be 
an  aristocrat,  nor  conceive  of  Heaven  as  an  aristocracy. 
It  is  true  God  ruled  all,  but  He  ruled  because  He  was 
pure  goodness,  and  He  asked  obedience  on  that 
ground.  That  is  not  the  imperial  ground  of  rule,  and 
Milton  does  not  give  that  title  to  God.  He  is  the 
Almighty  Father,  the  King  of  Heaven,  never  the 
Emperour.  That  title  is  reserved  for  Satan.  Beneath 
God's  rule,  though  there  are  orders  and  degrees,  all 
are  equal  and  free.  The  Heaven  of  Milton  is  a 
republic,  if  I  may  use  the  term,  under  the  sway  of 
Infinite  Goodness.  Satan  rebels  because  the  Son  is 
placed  over  the  angels  who  are  free  and  equal. 
Abdiel  allows  the  equality  and  the  freedom,  but 
defends  the  supremacy  of  the  Son  by  saying  that 
the  Son  is  the  visible  form  of  God,  and  at  one  with 
God,  and  that  things  remain  as  before.  The  only 
change  is  that  now,  through  the  creation  of  the  Son, 
through  God  Himself  becoming  as  an  angel,  He  has 
lifted  the  whole  angelic  body  into  higher  dignity— 

"  And  of  our  dignity 
How  provident  He  is,  how  far  from  thought 
To  make  us  less,  bent  rather  to  exalt 
Our  happy  state  under  one  Head  more  near  (to  himself  \ 
United/' 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  93 

The  whole  of  the  arguments  used  in  Bks.  v. 
and  vi.  go  to  prove  that  Milton's  order  of  Heaven 
was  conceived  as  a  republican  one  under  God's 
sovereignty.  But  it  is  a  republic  in  which  mob  law 
or  universal  suffrage  are  unknown ;  in  which  the  uni- 
versal Lordship  of  God  insisted  on  righteous  order ; 
and  order  was  kept  by  the  choice  of  the  best  in  power 
and  intellect  and  goodness  to  rule  the  rest.  All 
through  his  work,  both  in  prose  and  poetry,  Milton 
had  a  dislike,  not  so  great  as  Shakspere's,  but  still 
great,  of  that  democracy  which  means  the  rule  of  the 
majority.  But  he  hated  still  more  the  oppressive  and 
tyrannical  rule  of  irresponsible  force,  and  he  has 
shown  what  his  view  of  it  is  in  Satan  and  his  Hell. 
Satan's  rebellion  is  not  the  rebellion  of  the  free  against 
oppression,  but  the  attempt  of  an  aristocrat  in  heart 
to  gain  imperial  power.  Milton's  Hell  is  aristocratic, 
or  rather  it  is  the  picture  of  a  state  under  an  imperial 
tyrant  who  has  made  a  servile  court  around  him.  The 
Puritan  who  read  of  Satan's  rebellion  did  not  see  in 
it  a  picture  of  his  own  rebellion,  and  those  who  think 
so  must  have  but  slightly  considered  their  Milton. 
He  saw  rather  in  Satan  the  picture  of  the  tyranny 
against  which  he  had  fought — the  adversary,  such  as 
Charles  had  been,  surrounded  by  Belial  and  Moloch 
and  Mammon,  the  representatives  of  sensuality,  and 
oppressive  force,  and  evil  wealth,  and  by  Beelzebub, 
in  whom  I  have  often  fancied  we  may  trace  the  linea- 
ments of  Strafford  (Bk.  ii.  300). 

The  Interest  of  the  Story  itself  is  not  only 
of  the  story,  but  of  the  problem  and  struggle  it  re- 
presents, the  problem  of  the  origin  of  evil,  the  struggle 
of  a  moral  being  against  evil  without  him.  The 
latter  is  the  artistic  motive  of  the  poem,  and  it 
has  always,  and  in  all  literatures,  interested  man- 
kind. It  is  the  foremost  subject  of  art.  The  story 
in  Genesis  is  one  of  its  forms ;  and  it  is  of  very  little 
consequence,  so  far  as  the  main  interest  goes,  whether 
we  take  the  story  as  literally  true  or  not.  If  we 
should  make  it  wholly  fabulous,  we  are  yet  excited  by 


94  MILTON.  [chap. 

the  temptation  and  the  inward  strife  it  causes.  But 
the  subject,  as  it  came  before  Milton,  had  a  special 
condition  attached  to  it.  He  was  obliged  to  conceive 
evil  tempting  those  who  had  never  known  evil.  That 
condition  was  fortunate,  for  it  made  the  subject  almost 
new — the  primal  contest  of  untried  and  simple  good- 
ness with  evil.  But  it  was  also  unfortunate,  because  it 
necessarily  forced  Milton  to  deprive  himself  of  all  the 
play  of  the  complex  passions  stirred  when  evil  from 
without  meets  good  and  evil  within  a  man,  and  the 
abstraction  of  these  passions  and  their  results  made 
his  work  extraordinarily  difficult. 

The  inherent  fault  of  the  subject  also  belongs  to  this 
condition.  We  have  no  experience  of  the  innocent 
position  of  Adam  and  Eve,  and  we  cannot  sympathise 
with  their  struggle  against  temptation  except  in  imagi- 
nation. So  far  our  human  interest  in  them,  is  not  great. 
But  in  proportion  to  the  loss  of  that  interest  is  the  gain 
of  our  interest  in  the  work  of  the  artist.  He  is  driven 
by  his  subject  into  pure  imagination,  pure  invention. 
We  are  in  a  world  of  beings  who  belong  to  our 
common  humanity,  but  without  the  all-modifying 
element  of  evil.  Where  they  are  apart  from  us,  the 
interest  of  the  poem  is  in  the  artistic  treatment; 
where  they  are  at  one  with  us,  the  interest  is  in  the 
old  human  subject  which  all  the  great  artists  of  the 
world  have  either  touched  or  developed.  To  say  the 
poem  gives  no  pleasure,  or  that  Adam,  and  Eve,  and 
Satan  do  not  interest  us  because  we  do  not  take  the 
story  literally,  is  simply  not  the  fact.  Why  do  people 
read  Paradise  Lost?  First,  because  the  story  in- 
terests them  ;  secondly,  because  of  its  fine  passages  ; 
thirdly,  for  its  art ;  lastly,  for  all  these  three  wrought 
into  a  splendid  whole  and  unity  by  the  imagination  of 
a  great  genius.  Paradise  Lost  is  one  of  the  few 
universal  poems  of  the  world  ;  imperial  in  the  sense 
that  the  work  of  Homer  and  Virgil  and  Dante  and 
Shakspere  is  ;  worthy  to  exercise  command  over  the 
heart  and  intellect  of  all  ages.  Its  majesty  and 
beauty  are  beyond  praise  ;  its  faults  should  be  spoken 


tv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  95 

of  by  smaller  men  with  truth,  but  with  reverence. 
But  all  may  tell  of  the  pleasure  that  it  gives  them,  and 
strive  to  find  the  sources  of  that  pleasure,  and  the 
more  fully  any  one  can  do  this,  the  more  he  will  feel 
his  soul  enlarged.  It  is  this  I  have  endeavoured  to 
do  in  the  following  pages. 


PARADISE  LOST. 

The  First  Book.— The  subject  is  "Paradise  Lost" 
— "  Of  man's  first  disobedience."  In  asking  how 
it  was  lost,  Milton  introduces  the  author  of  its  loss, 
and  the  poem  opens  with  the  description  of  Satan 
in  Hell,  awaking  to  the  consciousness  of  his  ruin. 
The  story  of  Heaven  lost  to  him  prepares  our  thought 
for  the  story  of  Paradise  lost  to  man.  He  gathers 
his  whole  host  together,  resolves  on  war  by  guile 
since  force  is  unavailing,  and,  telling  of  a  new 
world  on  which  they  may  seize,  and  the  fame  of  which 
he  had  heard  in  Heaven,  calls  a  council  in  Pande- 
monium, "suddenly  built  out  of  the  deep,"  where 
they  may  resolve  how  to  hurt  God  by  an  invasion  of 
evil  into  the  new-made  Earth.  In  this  way,  though 
with  a  vague  and  undefined  touch,  the  main  subject 
is  impressed  upon  our  minds,  and  from  the  very 
beginning  we  look  forward  to  Man  as  the  hero  of 
the  epic. 

But  what  a  way  it  is,  and  through  what  a  splendid 
range  of  pictures  we  are  led !  The  force  of  con- 
ception never  fails.  The  interest,  step  by  step  with 
the  gathering  of  the  host  of  Hell,  is  slowly  accumu- 
lated to  the  point  where  Satan  reaches  the  height 
of  his  thought,  and  sorrow,  and  invective.  It  is  like 
the  growth  of  a  thunderstorm,  from  its  rising  in  the 
horizon  to  its  outburst  in  the  zenith.  At  first  Hell  is 
silent — then  the  fallen  archangel  awakes  and  looks 
around  hirn  in  sorrow,  and  this  solitary  picture  of 
him  isolates  him  for  ever  in  our  imagination.  He 
calls   on    Beelzebub,    and  the  passion   of  the  poem 

7 


96  MILTON.  [chap. 

begins  in  the  mingled  mournfulness  and  pride  of  the 
speech.  Together  they  make  their  way  to  the  burn- 
ing shore,  and  the  two  figures  stand  alone,  hewn 
into  reality  by  Milton's  sculptural  imagination.  The 
rest  lie  tossing  and  astonied  on  the  fiery  lake,  and 
the  fierce  scorn  of  Satan's  awakening  summons  has 
less  of  sorrow  now,  and  more  of  pride.  The  interest 
deepens  and  the  picture  fills  as  the  whole  host  hover 
on  wing  under  the  cope  of  Hell  and  light  upon  the 
plain.  All  Hell  is  now  awake.  The  mental  progress 
of  the  angels  is  the  same  as  Satan's.  At  first  con- 
fused and  sorrow-stricken,  they  soon  marshal  their 
armies  in  array,  and,  when  the  great  banner  is  unfurled, 
their  sorrow  yields  to  fixed  thought,  deliberate  valour 
succeeds  to  rage,  and  waving  their  ten  thousand 
banners,  they  await  their  chief's  command.  One 
would  think,  so  magnificent  is  the  scene,  that  the 
imagination  could  be  no  further  lifted.  But  at  this 
very  moment  Milton,  rising  majestically,  creates  the 
noblest  speech  and  picture  in  the  Book.  Pride,  sor- 
row, splendour  of  imagery,  and  splendour  of  resolve 
are  mingled  into  the  image  of  Satan  and  in  his  words  ; 
and  these  are  reflected  in  the  description  of  the  host 
and  their  passion,  till,  at  the  word  of  war,  "millions  of 
flaming  swords  out-flew,"  and  the  climax  at  last  is 
reached.  Throughout,  the  grandeur  of  the  picture 
has  increased  with  the  growing  grandeur  of  the 
thought.  The  book  is  built  on  the  same  lines  as 
those  of  David's  noblest  psalms — an  outburst  of  im- 
petuous passion,  swelling,  and  rising  in  the  midst 
into  intensity ;  then  slowly  dying  down,  with  touches 
of  soft  beauty  at  the  close,  and  relieved  in  the  de- 
scent by  episodes  of  thought  which  unite  them- 
selves, though  at  a  distance,  to  the  main  subject. 
The  episode,  in  which  the  leaders  of  the  host  are 
described,  as  they  will  be  afterwards  worshipped  on 
earth,  occurring  before  the  climax,  serves  to  lower 
the  pitch  of  excitement  to  the  point  at  which  it  can 
be  roused  again  without  weariness.  When  the  descent 
begins  after  the  climax,  the  episode  of  the  building 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  97 

of  Pandemonium  relieves  yet  fills  the  lurid  picture, 
and  animates  and  lightens  Hell  itself.  The  tale  be- 
comes less  and  less  sombre,  and  before  long  is  made 
beautiful.  The  lovely  and  learned  play  of  Milton's 
imagination  diversifies  it.  Architecture  is  brought  in 
with  the  recollected  pleasure  of  one  who  had  seen 
the  Pantheon,  and  classic  fable  adds  itself  to  art,  and 
two  similes,  one  of  bees  busy  in  a  dewy  land  and 
one  of  faery  sport  in  the  forest,  bring  us  clean  out  ot 
the  murky  air  of  Hell.  These  images  serve  to  rest 
the  imagination,  wearied  with  the  strain  so  heavily 
laid  upon  it,  and  the  work  is  like  that  of  Nature 
herself,  when,  at  the  dying  of  the  thunderstorm,  she 
fills  the  western  Heavens  with  passages  of  tender 
coloured  cloud  and  sky.  A  few  lines,  at  the  end,  which 
describe  the  great  lords  in  council,  nobly  re-introduce 
the  subject 

Book  II. — The  Second  Book  begins  with  the 
council  which  decides  that  the  ruin  of  man  shall  be 
attempted.  An  episode  then  describes  the  employ- 
ments and  amusements  of  the  rebel  angels  while 
they  await  the  news  of  the  ruin  of  man,  and  the 
rest  of  the  book  tells  of  Satan's  meeting  with  Sin  and 
Death,  whom  he  calls  on  to  follow  him  to  the  task 
of  the  ruin  of  man.  At  every  point,  even  to  the  last 
moment,  when  the  Ruiner  sees,  beyond  Chaos,  the  new 
world  within  whose  sphere  Earth  lies,  we  are  directed 
to  the  main  subject,  and  wait,  with  a  kind  of  awful 
expectation,  for  the  appearance  of  Adam,  around 
whom  and  whose  fate,  all  Hell  and  all  its  indwellers 
are  thus  gathered.  Yet,  in  face  of  this,  and  of  the 
similar  collecting  of  all  the  interest  of  Heaven  around 
Man  in  the  next  book,  there  are  critics  blind  enough 
to  say  that  Satan  is  the  hero  of  the  epic. 

Milton's  intellectual  force  is  nowhere  better  shown 
than  in  the  speeches  of  the  conclave.  Satan's  brief 
introduction  of  the  debate  is  more  proud  in  its  as- 
sumed humility  than  his  loudest  boasting ;  and  Mil- 
ton's object  is  to  deepen  our  sense  of  his  pride  and 
his  isolation. — "  I  was  first  in  Heaven  :   I   am  first 


98  MILTON.  [chap. 

now,  but  only  by  your  choice.  It  were  possible  to 
envy  the  highest  in  Heaven,  but  in  Hell,  where  pre- 
eminence of  place  means  pre-eminence  of  pain,  who 
would  envy?  Here,  then,  faction  cannot  be  ;  we  are 
more  naturally  united  in  Hell  than  in  Heaven." — He 
makes  revenge  the  key-note  of  the  council. 

Moloch  declares  for  open  war — If  God  cannot  destroy 
us  utterly,  let  us  take  what  revenge  we  can  ;  we  can- 
not suffer  more  than  now — more  would  be  annihilation; 
and  that  would  be  better,  if  He  can  inflict  it,  than  this 
endless  misery." — This  is  the  image  of  brute  force  in  its 
despair,  in  its  blind  anger,  in  its  hatred  of  pain  and 
its  weakness  to  endure  it. 

Belial,  at  the  other  pole  of  temperament  and 
thought,  replies,  that  a  reason  for  war,  grounded 
on  despair,  is  of  itself  a  reason  against  war.  There 
is  no  room  for  revenge ;  God  is  unconquerable  :  and 
to  be  annihilated  is  not  to  be  desired. 

"  Sad  cure,  for  who  would  lose, 
Though  full  of  pain,  this  intellectual  being, 
These  thoughts  that  wander  through  eternity."  1 

"  And  is  God  likely  to  give  annihilation  ?  He  is  far  too 
wise  " — for  Belial  has  sympathy  with  intellect,  even 
in  God.  Nor  is  the  rest  of  his  speech  less  full  of  the 
contempt  of  the  highly  cultivated  intelligence  for  the 
brute  bluster  of  Moloch.  "  What  worse,  they  say,  than 
this  Hell  ?  Is  this  quiet  council  of  ours  worse  than 
being  chained  on  the  burning  lake  ?  We  might  be  ten- 
fold more  wretched  did  God  choose  it.  Therefore  I 
give  my  voice  for  peace.  Who  will  say  it  is  vile  to  live 
in  peace  ?  It  is  not  vile  to  suffer.  We  risked  all,  and 
the  law  is  just  which  says,  Suffer  now.  I  laugh  at  those 
who  are  bold  with  the  sword,  and  not  brave  to  bear 

1  It  is  the  yearning  of  intelligence  to  always  know  itself,  it  is 
the  ineradicable,  unwearied  curiosity  of  the  Renaissance  (nowhere 
is  the  quintessence  of  its  spirit  better  expressed),  which  Milton, 
perhaps  with  intention,  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Belial.  Lover 
of  knowledge  as  Milton  was,  yet,  all  through  this  epic,  through 
Paradise  Regained,  through  Comus  even,  he  urges  temperance  in 
knowledge  as  well  as  in  life, 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  t>0 

the  doom  they  risked.  And  if  we  suffer  quietly,  our 
foe  may  remit  his  anger,  our  pain  lessen,  or  we 
become  inured  to  it,  or  time  bring  better  chance." 
— This  is  the  image  of  intellectual  culture,  without 
goodness,  made  soft  by  sin,  in  a  nation  decayed  by 
luxury,  and  enslaved. 

u  War  means,  answers  Mammon,  either  to  disen- 
throne  God,  or  to  regain  our  place.  The  first  is  im- 
possible, the  second  unacceptable.  Suppose  He  gave 
us  back  our  place,  could  we  serve  Him,  spend  an 
eternity  in  servile  worship  of  one  we  hate  ?  Let 
us  seek  our  good  from  ourselves,  build  a  free  empire 
here,  and  win  use  out  of  ill -fortune,  and  ease  out  of 
pain.  Our  world  is  dark,  but  we  have  skill  to  make 
it  magnificent :  and,  by  length  of  time,  our  torments 
may  become  our  elements,  native  to  us,  and  be  no 
longer  pain.  Dismiss  all  thought  of  war." — This  is 
the  image  of  the  empire  of  godless  utility  and  wealth, 
of  that  world  which  says,  Man  shall  live  by  bread 
alone. 

All  Hell  applauds  the  speech.  Then  Beelzebub — 
a  sublime  picture  of  a  great  minister  touched  with  a 
gleam  of  far-off  beauty  from  another  world  than  hell, 
when  the  attention  given  to  him  is  said  to  be  as  still 
as  night  or  summer's  noontide  air — takes  up  the  argu- 
ment. "  Why  speak  of  growing  empires,  why  of  peace 
or  war  ?  God  will  rule  Hell  as  Heaven.  Hell  is  His 
empire,  not  ours.  Peace  will  not  be  given,  nor  can 
we  return  it.  War  has  been  tried,  and  we  are  foiled. 
But  we  can  study  a  less  dangerous  enterprise  which  will 
'  surpass  common  revenge.'  There  is  a  new  world, 
and  in  dwellers  in  it,  in  whom  God  takes  pleasure. 
We  may  spoil  His  pleasure  by  ruining  His  creation." 
The  advice  unites  those  who  wish  for  war  and  peace. 
In  the  silence  that  follows  the  question,  Who  shall 
go — Satan  claims  the  quest ;  and  Milton,  in  his  manner, 
closes  the  dark  deliberation  with  a  sweet  natural 
simile,  out  of  place  perhaps,  but  serving,  as  before, 
to  relieve  the  over-tasked  imagination. 

Of  a  true  Hell  there  is  nothing  here.    The  speeches 


loo  MILTON.  [chap. 

are  those  of  ambitious  rebels  against  rightful  power. 
It  is  not  defenders  of  freedom  that  speak,  but  fallen 
and  tyrannous  aristocrats.  Nor  are  the  amusements 
of  Hell,  in  the  episode  which  follows,  natural  to  that 
dark  dwelling.  The  Homeric  games,  the  philosophical 
discourse  on  retired  hills,  the  music  and  heroic  song  in 
the  silent  valley,  the  "  bold  adventure  to  discover  wide 
that  dismal  world,"  take  our  thoughts  away  from  Hell. 
Save  in  the  first  circle,  we  do  not  meet  such  pictures 
in  Dante's  actual  Inferno.  There  is  no  true  horror  or 
pain  in  Milton's  hell.     He  never  saw  the  damned. 

The  poet  now  concentrates  all  his  force  on  the 
solitary  figure  of  Satan.  Two  mighty  similes,  one, 
where  he  is  seen  on  his  way  to  the  gates  like  a  fleet 
hung  in  the  air;  the  other,  when  he  meets  Death, 
and  seems  incensed  as  a  comet  firing  the  length  of 
Ophiuchus,  enlarge  our  vision  of  "  the  Adversary." 
Death's  image  has  claimed  admiration,  and  justly;  but 
if  the  lines,  which  leave  him  indefinite  yet  "terrible 
as  hell,"  are  sublime,  the  rest  of  the  allegory  of 
him  and  of  Sin  is  so  definite,  so  conscious  of  allegory, 
that  it  loses  sublimity.  Nor  does  the  vision  of  Chaos 
add  much  to  the  poem.  At  last  we  pass  out  of  the 
elemental  war  and  see  the  lovely  vision  of  the 
Empyreal  Heaven,  and  hanging  from  it,  in  a  golden 
chain,  the  pendent  World ;  that  is  the  whole  sphere  in 
which  earth,  and  sun,  and  planets,  and  stars  are 
contained. 

Book  III.  begins  with  a  beautiful  and  personal 
invocation  that  leads  us  at  last  into  Heaven.  As 
the  Second  Book  opens  with  the  council  in  Hell,  so 
the  Third  opens  with  the  council  in  Heaven.  The 
dramatic  interest  is  less,  but  some  interchange  of 
thought  is  preserved  through  the  conversation  of  the 
Father  and  the  Son  by  Milton's  Arianism,  which  makes 
the  Son  a  distinct  person  from  the  Father.  The 
whole  effect,  however,  is  dull.  It  is  not  that  God 
the  Father  "  reasons  like  a  school  divine,"  but  rather 
that  he  expounds  like  a  sectarian  of  the  time ;  no 
school  divine  would  have  made  the  Fall  of  man  the 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  101 

starting  point  of  theology,  nor  placed  so  much  power 
in  the  will  of  man.  The  coldness  of  the  discourse 
transfers  itself  to  the  verse.  When  it  is  over,  the 
employments  of  Heaven  are  described,  as,  in  the 
Second  Book,  after  the  council,  the  employments  of 
Hell.  They  are  not  as  varied  as  those  of  Hell,  and 
are  no  more  than  praise  ;  but  Milton  loved  praise  and 
its  instrument,  music,  and  his  song  at  once  lifts  itself  into 
beauty.  No  ear  less  exquisite  than  his,  no  English  poet 
but  himself  could  have  heard  the  river  of  bliss — "  Roll 
o'er  Elysian  fields  her  amber  stream/'  The  council 
has  been  of  man's  faith  and  fall  ;  the  songs  of  praise 
are  for  the  mercy  to  be  shown  to  man  after  his  Fall. 
All  Heaven,  as  in  the  previous  book  all  Hell,  is  con 
centrated  on  Adam.     Again  we  expect  his  coming. 

We  draw  nearer  to  him  now,  the  centre  of  the 
poem,  for  from  Heaven  we  see  Satan  alighted  on  the 
outside  of  the  World.  The  rest  of  the  book  is  taken 
up  with  his  wanderings.  There  is  a  curious  piece 
of  mere  fancy  in  the  description  of  the  Paradise 
of  Fools,  which  adds  nothing  to  the  poem,  and  is  like 
a  vacation  exercise,  introduced  because  it  wanted  a 
place  somewhere.  Its  controversial  element  and  its 
fantastic  and  heavy  imagery  distract  the  attention  from 
the  solitary  and  ranging  figure  of  Satan  on  the  desert 
convex  of  the  world,  round  whom  Milton's  imagina- 
tion is  nobly  at  work,  picturing  him  as  a  vulture 
searching  for  prey :  till,  coming  to  the  opening  in  the 
great  roof,  another  magnificent  simile  keeps  up  the 
notion  of  search,  and  paints  him  looking  down  into 
the  heaven  of  this  world  and  all  its  stars,  as  a  scout 
who  sees  from  a  hill  top  at  dawn  an  empire  with  its 
glittering  cities  on  the  plain.  We  seem  to  accom- 
pany the  flight  of  Satan  through  the  sky  and  stars 
to  the  sun,  so  clearly  do  we  see  it  through  Milton's 
eyes.  The  description  of  the  sun,  where  it  attempts 
to  be  definite  and  scientific,  is  poor :  but  what  can 
better  the  vividness  with  which  Uriel  is  carved  before 
our  eyes,  and  with  which  the  image  of  Satan,  as  a 
stripling  cherub,  lives  in  form,  and  colour,  and  clothing? 


io2  MILTON.  [chap. 

They  stand  before  us  as  if  they  were  moulded  from 
the  life,  and  their  talk  is  more  happy  and  natural 
than  usual  in  Milton,  and  seems  the  talk  of  angels. 
The  book  ends  in  prospect  of  Eden.  We  are  nearer 
Adam  when '  we  see  Satan  alighted  on  Mount 
Niphates. 

Book  IV.,  the  most  varied  of  all  in  interest  and 
beauty,  closes  that  part  of  the  poem  in  which  Satan 
is  the  chief  figure,  and  introduces  him  to  whom 
we  have  so  long  been  looking  forward,  Man,  the 
central  figure  of  the  epic.  As  before  in  thought,  so 
here  in  action,  all  Hell,  in  the  person  of  Satan ;  and 
mil  Heaven,  in  the  archangelic  interest  of  Uriel  and 
Gabriel,  and  in  the  vision  of  the  scales  of  God,  are 
collected  round  Man. 

The  book  opens  with  a  cry  for  help  against  Satan, 
as  if,  in  the  vivid  shaping  of  his  imagination,  the 
poet  were  present  at  the  time  and  place  :  and 
through  the  invocation  the  subject  is  again  brought 
forward.  We  look  about  and  seek  for  Man.  Satan, 
too,  is  on  the  search,  and  his  speech  on  Mount 
Niphates  is  the  key  to  Milton's  strange  estimate  of 
his  character.  The  change  of  his  aspect  during 
his  outburst  of  wrath  and  envy  is  seen  by  Uriel  from 
the  sun,  and  prepares  us  for  the  vigorous  incident  at 
the  end  of  the  book. 

We  then  enter  the  plain  of  Eden  with  Satan,  and  as 
the  whole  of  the  previous  books  has  been  a  long  pre- 
paration for  the  appearance  of  Man,  so  through  nearly 
one  hundred  lines  we  are  slowly  led  to  Paradise,  where 
Man  dwells.  Expectation,  in  Milton's  manner,  is  kept 
on  tiptoe ;  touch  after  touch  is  added  to  enhance  what 
is  coming,  as  when  "  of  pure  now  purer  air  meets  his 
approach."  A  splendid  simile  of  the  odorous  winds 
wafted  from  Paradise  lifts  still  higher  our  imagi- 
nation, but  it  is  somewhat  spoiled,  also  in  Milton's  way, 
by  a  far-fetched  allusion  to  the  story  of  Tobit,  and 
still  more,  by  a  reversion  to  the  controversial  cry  of 
Lycidas  against  hireling  wolves  when  Satan  overleaps 
the  wall.     But  we  do  not  even  then  get  to  Paradise. 


IV.]  PARADISE  LOST.  103 

There  is  still  a  pause  of  expectation,  and  Milton 
moralizes,  and  makes  the  map  of  Eden.  Then  at 
last  is  Paradise ;  and  the  lines  he  gives  to  it — in 
metrical  weight  and  balance  perfect — (how  beautiful 
the  sound  of  this — "  Rolling  on  orient  pearls  and 
sands  of  gold  ; "  and  of  this  the  thought  and  sound — 
"  Flowers  of  all  hue,  and  without  thorn  the  rose  ;  ") 
are  equal  to  the  height  of  loveliness  he  seeks  to 
hold,  and  rise  at  the  close,  when  one  would  think 
music  and  loveliness  could  be  no  more — into  fuller 
beauty  and  more  enchanted  music  (223 — 268).  A 
slight  break,  like  an  interlude,  intervenes,  and  then  t* 
we  see  Man,  the  hero  of  the  epic — 

"  Two  of  far  nobler  shape,  erect  and  tall,"  288,  &c. 

Lines  worthy  of  the  long  preparation  ! 

We  listen,  and  hear  Adam  speak,  and  the  moment 
we  touch  Man,  we  presage,  in  Adam's  words,  his  fall. 
There  is  but  little  to  awaken  our  pleasure  in  the  first 
words  of  Adam's  speech  and  of  Eve's  reply  ;  but  when 
Eve  glides  from  describing  her  relation  to  Adam  into  a 
remembrance  of  her  own  coming  into  life  and  meeting 
with  him,  the  poem  becomes  beautiful  again  in  a  series 
of  soft  and  vivid  pictures.  From  their  talk  Satan  who 
has  seen  and  envied  them  learns  how  to  bring  about 
their  fall,  and  the  ever- recurring  subject  enters  on  a 
new  phase.  Up  to  this  point  we  have  been  expecting 
Man,  henceforth  we  begin  to  expect  his  fall ;  and  from 
this  moment,  through  four  books,  we  are  kept  on 
the  stretch  of  this  new  expectation.  Uriel  glides  now 
from  the  descending  sun  to  warn  the  angelic  guard 
of  Satan's  coming.  Evening  falls,  and  in  the  lines 
so  harmonious  with  its  softness,  we  pass  from  the 
excitement  of  the  action  to  rest  for  a  little  on  the 
breast  of  Nature. 

The  book  might  have  closed  here,  but  Milton  only 
pauses  for  fresh  creation.  It  is  the  crisis  of  the 
interest  of  the  first  part  of  the  poem,  and  now  all 
the  characters  come  on  by  night  as  before  by  day ; 
Adam  and  Eve  in  the  midst,  and  the  others  circled 


104  MILTON.  [chap. 

round  them.  They  are  shown  in  the  converse  of 
love  and  innocence.  Adam  calls  Eve  to  sleep ;  she 
answers,  praising  him,  in  verses,  soft  as  her  breath 
and  as  the  tropic  night ;  and  Adam's  answer,  dull  at 
first  in  its  cold  philosophy,  passes  into  poetic  beauty 
when  he  speaks  of  the  unseen  spirits  of  the  Heaven ; 
and  his  joy  at  their  songs,  heard  as  they  haunt  the 
garden,  adds  a  new  touch  to  the  interest  of  Heaven 
in  Man,  and  to  the  beauty  of  Paradise.  Still 
Milton  cannot  leave  these  human  creatures,  his 
great  subject.  Their  bower  is  described,  their 
last  prayer,  their  innocent  passion,  and  their  sleep. 
From  noon  to  midnight  we  have  heard  the  tale 
of  their  hours,  as  in  the  next  book  we  hear  it  from 
morn  to  noon — a  whole  day.  Then  round  them 
gathers  Hell  and  Heaven.  The  moon  shines  on  the 
clear  picture  of  Gabriel's  watch;  on  Ithuriel  and 
Zephon  dazzling  through  the  garden;  on  Satan 
squatted  like  a  toad  by  the  ear  of  Eve.  Touched 
by  the  spear  he  leaps  to  his  full  height ;  and  his 
talk  and  that  of  the  two  angels  in  its  interchange 
of  stately  scorn  and  anger,  is  not  less  dramatic  than 
the  vivid  invention  of  Gabriel  and  the  guard  discerning 
through  the  shade  the  advance  of  the  two  angels,  with 
the  third  "of  regal  port,  but  faded  splendour  wan." 
Nor  is  the  strong  speech  of  Gabriel  and  Satan  un- 
worthy of  archangels;  none  but  Milton  could  have 
conceived  and  expressed  that  meeting ;  and  the  last 
description,  where  "  On  the  other  side  Satan  alarmed" 
(nothing  can  be  more  noble  than  the  use,  and  the 
placing  at  the  end  of  the  line,  of  the  word)  "  Dilated 
stood,"  fills  the  whole  scene  with  sublimity.  Then 
God  enters  the  action,  also  round  Man,  and  hangs  the 
scale  of  battle  in  the  sky.  The  weight  of  Satan  mounts 
upwards,  and  the  Fiend  flies  away  and  with  him  night, 
and  morn  arrives. 

Book  V.  begins  the  second  part  of  the  poem. 
Satan  has  fled,  and  keeps  in  the  dark  shadow  of  the 
earth  for  seven  days.  During  this  time  the  main  sub- 
ject is  untouched,  and  the  long  episodes  of  the  story  of 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  105 

the  War  in  Heaven  and  the  fall  of  the  rebel  angels, 
and  the  Creation  of  the  World  are  introduced.  But  the 
episodes  bear  on  the  main  subject,  and  enhance  its 
interest  before  it  comes  and  when  it  comes.  The 
war  in  Heaven  is  not  described  to  narrate  Satan's 
fall  so  much  as  to  warn  Man  against  his  own  fall. 
The  Creation  is  described  to  complete  the  story  of 
Man ;  all  is  told  to  keep  us  in  expectation  of  the  next 
crisis  of  the  poem,  to  which,  in  Bk.  ix.  Milton  gives 
all  his  strength. 

The  book  opens  with  Adam's  waking  of  Eve,  and 
with  her  relation  of  her  dream  in  which  the  subject 
of  the  epic  recurs,  and  the  coming  crisis  is  indicated. 
Adam's  lecture  on  dreams  has  too  philosophic  an  air, 
but  nothing  can  be  nobler  in  thought  and  verse  than  the 
great  Hymn  of  Praise  which  follows.  It  is  closer  to  the 
devout  force  of  a  Hebrew  lyric  and  to  the  grand  sim- 
plicity with  which  a  Hebrew  Psalmist  realised  God  and 
Nature  than  anything  I  know  in  Aryan  literature ;  and 
in  its  cosmical  embracing  of  a  whole  creation  may  be 
compared  not  only  to  Psalm  cxlviii.,  which  it  enlarges, 
but  also  to  civ.,  the  great  psalm  of  the  whole  universe. 
It  has  its  prologue  down  to  line  159,  followed  by  ten 
divisions,  like  the  verses  of  a  hymn,  but  of  unequal 
length,  and  ending  with  an  epilogue,  if  I  may  use  the 
term,  of  four  lines.  Like  all  Milton's  greatest  work, 
it  dilates  the  imagination ;  and  is  worthy  to  be  sung 
by  the  primaeval  Man  and  Woman.  God  hears  their 
praise,  and  sends  Raphael  to  warn  them  of  danger. 

Milton's  angels  are  the  angels  of  a  painter.  Of 
power  and  splendour  and  swiftness  like  Tintoret's, 
clothed  and  coloured  like  Angelico's,  they  are  not 
described,  they  are  made  visible  to  the  eye.  Uriel  was 
glorious,  but  still  more  glorious  is  Raphael,  springing 
light  from  among  the  celestial  Ardours,  changing  his 
form  at  will,  and  standing,  scattering  fragrance,  on  the 
eastern  cliff  of  Paradise.  Neither  Adam  nor  Eve,  when 
they  meet  him,  are  lowered  to  our  imagination  by  his 
presence.  They  are  equal  in  sinlessness  to  him,  they 
are  only  less  as  yet  in  ethereal  nature,  and  Milton's 


io6  MILTON.  [chap. 

art  in  this  distinguishing  of  two  different  natures  is 
exquisite.  It  is  not  so  happy  in  the  description  of 
their  dinner  and  in  their  discourse.  But  the  conver- 
sation, apart  from  poetry,  is  interesting.  It  gives  us 
Milton's  conception  of  the  physical  nature  of  angels, 
and  his  notion  of  matter  and  spirit  and  soul.  Spirit, 
in  Milton's  sense  of  the  word,  is  etherealised  matter 
— the  matter  of  which  angels  are  made ;  and  it  is 
into  this  that  the  body  of  Adam  will  change,  if  he 
be  obedient.  But  the  soul  is  the  man,  and  the 
angel.  "The  whole  man  is  soul,"  to  quote  Milton's 
words  elsewhere,  "  and  the  soul  man." 

The  subject  of  the  Poem  recurs  when  Adam  asks 
what  means  the  caution,  "  if  we  be  found  obedient," 
and  the  question  introduces  the  warning  story  ox 
the  angels  who  fell  by  disobedience.  This  is  the 
true  chronological  beginning  of  the  epic.  With 
splendour  of  imagination,  with  sphere-music,  made  by 
the  angelic  dance;  and  in  verse  which  resounds  with 
that  which  it  describes,  the  tale  is  told  of  the  begetting 
of  the  Son  of  God  in  whom  God  makes  himself  visible 
to  Heaven.  The  pleasure  we  have  in  the  story  is  in 
the  royal  verse,  more  than  in  the  conception ;  I  may 
even  say  that  the  verse  makes  the  conception  seem 
greater  than  it  is.  We  return  to  the  interest  of  passion 
in  the  rise  into  rebellion  of  Satan's  envy  and  pride, 
mingled  with  the  charm  of  his  friendship  for  Beelzebub. 
Pathos  is  added  to  his  cry  in  Heaven,  "  Sleep'st  thou, 
companion  dear,"  when  we  remember  how,  in  a 
darker  place,  he  has  already  with  the  same  cry,  turned 
to  his  friend.  It  is  a  lovely  instance  of  the  art  of 
Milton. 

The  night  journey  of  Satan's  host  to  the  North 
fills  the  imagination,  and  is  accompanied  by  the  scorn 
of  God.  Milton  has  been  blamed  for  the  derision 
he  puts  in  the  mouth  of  the  Father  and  Son ;  but 
he  had  his  poetic  authority  in  Psalm  ii.  ;  and  his 
representation  of  God  must  be  judged  by  the  neces- 
sities of  epic  treatment.  The  book  closes  with 
the  speeches  of  Satan,  seen  already  as  the  great  Liar 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  107 

and  Tempter  ;  and  with  the  noble  vision  of  Abdiel, 
rising  alone  against  the  host,  among  innumerable  false, 
unmoved  ;  nor  can  one  help  thinking,  as  one  reads,  of 
Milton  himself,  and  that  the  lines  at  the  end  were 
unconsciously,  perhaps  consciously,  drawn  from  his 
own  position  as  he  wrote.  Fearless  and  compassed 
round  with  foes, 

"  Nor  number  nor  example  with  him  wrought 
To  swerve  from  truth,  or  change  his  constant  mind, 
Though  single." 

Book  VI.  is  filled  with  the  War  in  Heaven. 
The  materialism  of  which  it  has  been  accused  seems  to 
me  apart  from  the  point.  Johnson  says  that  the  con- 
fusion between  spirit  and  matter  fills  the  narrative 
with  incongruity.  He  does  not  know  that  Milton's 
'•'  spirit "  is  matter  etherealised ;  that  the  angels, 
in  his  view,  ate,  drank,  digested,  slept,  could  fight 
and  be  wounded,  like  Ares  in  the  Iliad.  He  says 
that  the  book  is  a  "favourite  with  children,  but  is 
gradually  neglected  as  knowledge  is  increased." 
This  however  is  not  a  question  of  knowledge,  but 
of  poetry,  and  of  epic  poetry.  Milton  needed 
battles  and  Homeric  combats,  and  he  used  them 
frankly;  and  he  desired  to  swell  and  enhance  the 
final  vision  of  the  Son  of  God  in  His  overthrow  of 
the  rebel  angels.  For  two  days  he  fills  Heaven  with 
noisy  and  violent  war,  that  at  the  end  angelic 
power  might  be  as  nothing  before  the  silent  single 
omnipotence  of  Messiah's  coming.  And  the  gradual 
growth  of  the  battle  to  this  terrific  climax  is  poetical, 
and  gives,  not  a  perfect,  but  at  times  a  splendid 
pleasure.  No  one  who  cares  for  the  poetry  cares 
whether  knowledge  is  satisfied  or  not.  The  story 
and  the  things  described  stand  on  their  own  epic 
grounds,  and  stand  clear.  The  cannons  are  very 
clumsy,  it  is  true,  but  we  must  remember  we  do  not 
see  them  with  Milton's  eyes.  Cannon,  in  his  day,  still 
impressed  the  imagination. 

The  book  opens  with  Abdiel' s  return,    The  prepara- 


108  MILTON.  [chap. 

tions  for  war  that  meet  him,  his  joyous  reception, 
the  leading  of  him  to  the  mount  of  God,  the  solemn 
voice  of  approval,  changing  suddenly  to  the  com- 
mand to  Michael  to  go  forth  to  war,  the  dreadful 
smoke  and  tempest  from  the  hill,  and  the  march  of 
the  host,  are  all  described  in  Milton's  finest  manner. 
The  march  may  well  be  compared,  and  Milton 
meant  it  to  be  so,  with  the  assembling  of  the  hosts 
in  Hell : — and  mark  how  the  continuous  advance  and 
the  swiftness  of  both  hosts,  rushing  to  meet  each 
other,  are  echoed  in  the  verse.  There  is  not  a 
single  full  stop  for  thirty  lines.  The  verse  pauses 
only  with  the  description  of  the  great  apostate  on 
his  chariot.  Abdiel  and  he  meet  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fight  with  Homeric  speeches,  and  in  Homeric 
combat.  It  is  the  prologue  to  the  battle,  and  surely 
never  was  the  noise  of  battle,  and  the  "ridges 
of  grim  war,"  and  the  swords  that  rose  and  fell, 
wide  wasting,  told  in  more  terrible  verse  than  that  which 
follows, until  Michael  and  Satan  met,  "while  Expecta- 
tion stood  in  horror."  Their  duel  is  inferior  in  force  to 
the  others  in  the  poem,  and  the  description  languishes 
till  night  divides  the  armies.  Nor  is  the  council  de- 
scribed with  the  mighty  power  of  the  council  in  Hell, 
and  the  introduction  of  science  and  its  engines  makes 
the  poetical  atmosphere  hard  to  breathe.  The  scoffing 
jests  of  Satan  and  Belial  may  be  paralleled  from  the 
Iliad,  but  they  lower,  as  the  whole  scene  does,  the  dig- 
nity of  the  poem  ;  and  it  is  lowered  still  more  by  the 
jingle  of  terms  in  the  jests,  the  puns,  and  the  quibbles — 
unfortunate  relics  of  the  Elizabethans.  Nor  is  the 
answer  the  angels  return  to  the  cannon  less  below 
the  place  and  the  contest.  Mountains  hurled  through 
the  air  disturb  the  conception  of  heaven,  and  are  so 
perilously  near  the  absurd  that  they  jar  on  the  solemn 
sense  one  ought  to  have  of  the  first  conflict  between 
good  and  evil.  The  only  excuse  is  that  Milton 
wished  to  enhance  the  last  picture,  but  it  is  not 
excuse  enough.  The  dialogue  which  follows  between 
the    Father  and  the  Son  is  overweighted  with   their 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  109 

mutual  praise  ;  and  there  are  parts  even  in  the  last 
description,  noble  as  it  is.  which  were  perhaps  better 
away.  Still,  equal  to  the  grandeur  of  the  awful  contest, 
and  in  poetry  which  seems,  like  the  chariot  and  the 
wheels,  to  burn  and  bicker  as  it  rolls,  Messiah  at  last 
appears, 

"  He  onward  came — far  off  his  coming  shone," 

and  the  battle  is  over.  Eternal  wrath,  gathered  into 
one  mighty  verse — 

"  Burnt  after  them  to  the  bottomless  deep." 

The  last  lines  insist  on  the  subject.  The  tale  is  a 
tale  of  warning,  and  the  key-note  of  the  first  subject 
of  the  poem — man's  disobedience — is  struck  again. 
However  vast  the  circuit  Milton  makes,  he  returns  to 
the  same  centre. 

Book  VII.  begins  with  Milton's  invocation  to 
Urania  to  govern  the  latter  half  of  his  song.  It  has  been 
objected  to  as  unnecessary,  but  we  should  be  sorry  to 
lose  the  personal  touches;  nor  does  it  injure,  but 
enhance,  the  solemn  impression  of  the  poem  to  have 
a  glimpse  of  the  lonely  singer,  "  on  evil  days  though 
fall'n,  and  evil  tongues,  with  darkness  and  with 
dangers  compassed  round  " — whose  soul  was  peopled 
with  the  vision  of  Heaven  and  Paradise  while  ail 
around  him  waxed  the  "barbarous  dissonance  of 
Bacchus  and  his  revellers," — and  the  words  suggest 
that  after  more  than  twenty  years  the  imagery  of 
Comas  again  presented  itself  to  his  imagination. 

The  theme  of  the  book  is  the  Creation.  It  was  not 
written  to  put  forth  a  scientific  theory  of  the  Creation. 
It  is  an  episode  in  an  epic,  not  a  treatise,  and  Milton 
did  not  care  whether  the  things  said  were  true,  or  not, 
to  fact.  He  uses  any  materials  which  he  thinks  poetical, 
and  fitted  for  epic  treatment.  Sometimes  he  takes  the 
Ptolemaic  view  of  the  Universe,  and  sometimes  the 
Copernican,  just  as  he  wants  them,  just  as  he  saw  the 
thing.  It  is  the  artist  who,  wanting  to  impress  us  with 
the  sense  of  Man  being  the  centre  of  the  poem,  makes 


no  MILTON.  [chap. 

the  Earth  the  centre  of  Creation.  It  is  the  artist,  who, 
in  the  next  book,  wanting  to  subordinate  Man  to  the 
Omnipotence  of  God,  sets  Earth  among  the  planets 
that  dance  about  the  sun  their  various  rounds.  More- 
over he  followed  the  account  in  Genesis  i. ;  and 
long  before  his  time  that  was  held  to  be  a  poetic 
representation.  Any  way,  Milton  used  it  as  such, 
for,  according  to  his  imaginative  needs,  he  enlarges 
or  modifies  that  account. 

The  opening  conversation  between  Raphael  and 
Adam,  in  which  the  Angel,  in  his  warning  against 
an  intemperate  desire  of  knowledge,  suggests  the 
coming  temptation,  weights  the  whole  description  of 
the  Creation  with  the  thought  and  sadness  of  the  Fall. 
The  same  note  of  anticipation  recurs  in  the  next  book, 
and  I  cannot  draw  too  much  attention  to  this  method 
of  work  in  Milton.  He  wins  our  interest  in  Paradise 
Lost  by  expectation,  not  surprise.  It  was  the  way  of 
the  Greek  Dramatists,  it  was  Shakspere's  way.  The 
audience  know  the  conclusion,  and  wait  for  it.  This 
is  the  finest  way  to  work,  but  only  a  great  artist  has 
the  power  to  do  it  well.  For  nothing  which  is  re- 
presented as  said  or  done  in  the  Poem  can  then 
be  left  unmotived,  or  unbalanced,  and  no  slipshod 
work  can  pass.  The  advantages  of  it  are  great, 
but  only  great  genius  can  use  them  ;  and  the  con- 
clusion being  known,  the  way  in  which  it  is  brought 
about,  and  its  catastrophe  heightened  or  softened, 
lies  open  to  continuous  criticisms,  criticisms  which, 
in  a  play  or  a  story  which  rests  on  a  surprise  at  the 
end,  cannot  be  given  until  the  story  is  finished.  In 
Milton's  work,  expectation  is  everywhere,  surprise 
nowhere. 

The  account  of  the  Creation  is  connected  by  way 
of  contrast  with  the  preceding  book,  which  is  a  book  of 
war  and  destruction.  The  Messiah,  there  Destroyer, 
is  here  Creator ;  and  the  motive  of  the  Creation  is  to 
repair  the  loss  Heaven  has  suffered  by  the  banishment 
of  a  third  part  of  its  indwellers.  The  chariot  of  the 
Son  of  God  pausing  on  the  shore  of  Heaven  above 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  in 

the  abyss  of  Chaos,  now  outrageous  from  the  tumult 
made  by  the  fall  of  the  rebel  angels,  is  a  splendid 
opening  to  the  scenery  of  the  Creation,  but  not 
more  grand  than  the  phrase — "Silence  ye  troubled 
waves,  and  thou  Deep,  peace."  What  follows  is  a  series 
of  descriptions,  full  of  magnificent  lines  :  and  for  those 
who  wish  to  study  Milton  as  a  master  of  all  the  possi- 
bilities of  blank  verse,  there  is  no  book  so  well  worthy 
of  attention  as  Bk.  vii.  It  is  an  amazing  revelation  of 
what  a  great  artist  in  verse  can  do.  Here,  also,  he 
allows  himself  to  play  with  his  vehicle,  and  being  in 
the  humour  to  make  the  sound  the  echo  of  the  sense, 
fulfils  his  humour  and  delights  to  fulfil  it. 

The  " broad  bare  backs"  of  the  mountains  up- 
heaved into  the  clouds,  the  waters  that  hasten  with 
"glad  precipitance," the  grass  and  flowers  that  make  gay 
earth's  "  bosom  smelling  sweet,"  the  trees  that  rise  "in 
stately  dance,"  seem,  as  we  read,  to  be  created  before 
our  eyes.  The  extremely  involved  construction  of 
the  passage  that  describes  the  heavenly  host,  leaves, 
if  that  be  not  my  fancy,  a  sense  of  their  involved 
multitude  and  movement  on  the  mind.  The  fish  that 
"glide  under  the  green  wave,"  or  "  bank  the  mid-sea," 
or  "  tempest  the  ocean,"  are  as  vigorously  sketched : 
but  with  less  beauty  than  the  birds  who  "never 
looked  so  beautiful  since  they  left  Paradise."  Com- 
pare, to  give  one  example  of  the  union  of  sound  and 
sense,  these  two  contrasted  descriptions : — 

"  There  Leviathan, 
Hugest  of  living  creatures,  on  the  deep 
Stretcht  like  a  promontory,  sleeps  or  swims  ;  " 

and  this  of  the  prudent  crane  that  steers — 

"  Her  annual  voyage,  borne  on  winds  :  the  air 
Floats  as  they  pass,  fanned  with  unnumbered  plumes.' 

When  all  is  over  and  Earth  "consummate  lovely 
smiled,"  Man  appears.  But  as  Man  is  the  central 
personage  of  the  poem,  Milton,  to  mark  this,  stops 
the  whole  course  of  action.  The  Eternal  Father 
8 


ii2  MILTON.  [chap. 

himself  comes  down  to  intervene  in  the  work.  It  is 
one  of  the  fine  instances  of  the  skill  with  which  the 
poem  is  conducted,  and,  at  the  same  time,  as  usual, 
the  Fall,  the  subject  of  the  whole,  is  reintroduced. 
There  is  a  pretty  touch  of  reality,  when  Raphael, 
describing  the  return  of  the  Son  of  God,  says  that 
Adam  remembers  how  the  earth  and  air  resounded 
then  with  harmonies,  and  the  book  ends  with  the 
Sabbath  and  the  Song  of  Creation. 

Book  VIII. — The  whole  of  this  book  is  devoted 
to  Man,  the  central  personage  of  the  epic.  He  is 
pictured  in  various  relations  and  with  various 
thoughts;  his  character  is  developed,  his  person 
painted.  In  order  that  our  imagination  may  be  filled 
with  him,  he  tells  the  tale  of  his  creation,  of  his 
joy  and  innocence,  of  his  early  converse  with  God ; 
of  his  meeting  with  and  love  of  Eve ;  and  since  we 
know  the  conclusion,  every  touch  of  beauty  and  good- 
ness throughout  the  tale  deepens  our  pity  as  we  look 
on,  and  think  of  the  ruin  so  near  at  hand.  Our  pity  is 
further  deepened  when  Adam  takes  up  the  converse 
with  Raphael.  We  find  him  thirsting  for  more  know- 
ledge, and  as  in  the  last  book,  so  here  also,  we  are 
made  to  look  forward  to  that  desire  of  forbidden 
knowledge  which  was  to  produce  the  Fall ;  we  presage 
it,  and  our  sorrow  for  the  fall  begins. 

The  angel's  answer,  too  discursive  for  its  place, 
takes  us  away  from  the  matter  of  the  Epic,  but  it 
brings  us  closely  into  contact  with  that  personality 
which  at  times  overweights  the  poem, — the  personality 
of  Milton  himself.  We  see  how,  even  in  elder  years, 
the  new  theories  of  knowledge  were  seized  by  him, 
how  he  played  with  speculation  ;  nor  can  I  doubt 
that  the  lines  179-197  are  Milton's  latest  conclusion 
of  what  was  the  true  aim,  after  much  pursuit  of  know- 
ledge, of  human  intelligence.     And  the  lines — 

"  That  not  to  know  at  large  of  things  remote 
From  use,  obscure  and  subtle,  but  to  know 
That  which  before  us  lies  in  daily  hie, 
Is  the  prime  wisdom  ;  " 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  113 

are  a  curious  prophecy  of  that  which  the  boundless 
curiosity  of  the  Renaissance  was  coming  to,  not  only 
in  the  new  science  which  followed  Milton's  time  ;  not 
only  in  the  resolute  study  of  mankind  by  the  critical 
school  of  the  poets ;  but  also  in  that  later  school 
which  in  Wordsworth  started  from  the  same  ground, 
but  came  to  a  different  conclusion. 

Adam,  after  this  discourse  on  knowledge,  proposes 
to  tell  the  tale  of  his  creation,  and  Raphael  is  glad 
to  hear  it,  for  he  was  away  at  the  time,  "  on  excursion 
toward  the  gates  of  Hell."  It  is  a  good  example  of 
Milton's  art.  By  one  slight  touch,  when  the  angel 
describes  the  dismal  gates  and  the  noise  within  of 
torment  and  loud  lamenting,  the  poet  recalls  and 
takes  care  that  we  shall  not  lose  the  first  imprint 
made  upon  our  imagination,  and  prepares  us  for  the 
reappearance  of  Satan.  Then  Adam  begins.  The 
vividness  of  his  first  moment  of  life  is  finely  expressed, 
but  that  which  is  most  exquisite  is  the  grace  and  the 
temperance  of  the  tale.  The  notes  of  innocence, 
simplicity,  and  joy  are  preserved  throughout.  Adam 
is  not  now  the  reasoner  who  is  sometimes  tiresome  : 
he  talks  like  a  man  who  loves  the  things  of  which 
he  speaks.  He  is  both  child  and  man.  And  the 
conversation  of  God  with  him  has  the  same  tender 
natural  grace.  As  tenderly  wrought  and  natural  is 
Adam's  speech  when  he  asks  for  a  companion.  Eve 
seems  to  throw  back  her  own  charm  upon  the  story. 
God's  smile  "  brightens  "  it,  and  the  pleasant  way  in 
which  He  draws  out  and  plays  with  Adam's  wish  is  of 
that  nature  that  belongs  alike  to  God  and  Man,  and  is 
not  unworthy  of  a  father  ;  nor  is  the  verse  in  which  the 
whole  is  told  less  in  harmony  with  the  tale,  "  smooth 
sliding  without  step."  Then  Adam  tells  of  the  creation 
of  Eve,  which  he  has  seen  in  vision.  As  Man  has  been 
exalted  in  our  eyes  by  Milton,  so  now  Woman  is  lifted 
into  higher  place  by  Adam's  description  and  by  his 
love.  We  have  seen  Adam  through  Eve's  eyes; 
we  now  see  Eve  through  Adam's.  Love  fills  the 
verse,  and  the  lines  509-520,  which  close  the  tale,  are 


H4  MILTON.  [chap. 

full  of  pure  and  exalted  passion.  In  them  Milton, 
who  has  kept  himself  in  hand  up  to  this  time, 
never  permitting  himself  to  rise  beyond  one  temperate 
level,  lets  loose  all  his  poetic  power.  The  softness  of 
the  whole  is  more  soft  in  the  close,  and  all  the  rapture 
of  its  love,  and  all  the  rapturous  outburst  of  Nature 
herself  to  celebrate  the  nuptial  hour  of  Adam  and 
Eve,  are  made  more  beautiful  by  the  previous  temper- 
ance of  the  poet. 

We  pass  from  this  into  another  discussion  (stirred 
by  Adam's  analysis  of  his  passion  for  Eve)  of  what 
passion  is,  its  limits,  its  Tightness,  and  as  to  whether 
the  angels  are  possessed  of  it.  The  interest  of  the 
dialogue  is  more  personal  than  poetical.  It  seems  to 
me  that  Adam  expresses  what  Milton  thought  of  passion 
when  he  was  younger,  and  that  Raphael  expresses  what 
Milton  thought  of  it  when  he  was  old,  or  perhaps  that 
both  express  a  discussion  that  always  went  on  in  Mil- 
ton's mind ;  and  I  am  confirmed  in  this  by  the  allusion 
in  the  line  591  to  Petrarca's  "scala  amoris  "  and  his 
theory,  founded  on  Plato,  as  to  the  final  cause  of 
love,  a  theory  which  took  possession  of  Milton's 
mind  when  he  was  at  Cambridge. 

The  discussion  is  not,  however,  introduced  without 
a  poetic  reason.  It  bears  on  the  temptation.  As  in 
the  beginning  of  the  book  the  passion  for  knowledge 
is  touched  on,  and  we  presage  it  as  the  cause  of 
the  fall  of  Eve,  so  here  the  passion  in  love  is  touched 
on,  for  Milton  makes  it  the  cause  of  the  fall  of  Adam. 
He  perishes  "  through  vehemence  of  love  "  for  Eve. 
When  Raphael  says  "  take  heed  lest  passion  sway 
thy  judgment," — we  look  forward  to  Adam's  fall,  and 
when  the  Angel  leaves  the  earth  we  prophesy  the 
mischief  wrought  in  Eve  by  curiosity  and  in  Adam 
by  passion.  All  has  been  made  ready  for  the  work 
of  the  ninth  book. 

Book  IX.  brings  us  to  the  third  and  last  part 
of  the  poem.  The  episodes  are  at  an  end ;  we 
return  to  the  subject.  All  has  been  told,  all  the 
threads  taken  up  and  traced  back.     Nothing  has  been 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  115 

left  undone,  untouched,  unmotived.  We  reach  the 
catastrophe  so  long  prepared  for,  so  long  expected. 
Satan  and  Mankind  are  brought  face  to  face,  and 
the  ruin  is  wrought ;  and  Milton  marks  that  this  book 
is  the  crisis  of  his  poem  by  referring  in  the  intro- 
duction to  the  crisis  of  the  Iliad  and  of  the  sEneid. 
And  he  brings  all  his  powers  to  bear  upon  the  tale 
and  gathers  into  his  representation  of  Adam  and  Eve 
and  Satan  all  that  is  chief  in  their  aspect  and  their 
characters.  The  force  of  Milton's  intellect,  his 
analysis  of  motives  and  of  character,  his  power  of  re- 
presenting the  passions,  and  especially  love,  what 
dramatic  turn  he  had,  what  pathos  he  had,  his  natural 
description,  his  pictorial  quality,  his  similes,  what  skill 
he  had  in  telling  of  change  of  character  and  of  reaction 
of  feeling,  are  all  called  upon  in  this  book  to  do  their 
best  work,  and  he  has  held  them  firmly,  and  kept 
them  to  their  rigid  duty.  Unlike  most  of  the  other 
books,  there  are  very  few  passages  which  even 
Landor 1  would  think  redundant.  It  is  a  stern  and 
mighty  piece  of  work. 

The  importance  of  the  book  may  be  said  to  call 
for  the  introduction,  and  the  personal  allusions  in  it 
are  pathetic  and  interesting.  The  true  book  begins 
at  line  49,  when  Satan,  who  has  followed  the  shadow 
of  the  earth  for  seven  nights,  rises  like  a  mist  into 
Paradise.  His  speech  still  further  develops  his 
character ;  but  the  main  point  is  that  it  fixes  our 
minds  on  Man,  on  all  Creation  summed  up  in  Man, 
on  Man  as  made  with  care  by  God,  as  served  by 
angels.  That  is  Milton's  aim,  for  we  have  now  come 
to  the  crisis  of  Man's  fate. 

Satan  creeping  like  a  black  mist  through  Paradise, 
till  he  enters  the  serpent,  fills  the  imagination  with 
dim  dismay,  and  serves  to  heighten  the  brightness 
and  charm  of  the  morning  scene  that  follows  when 
Adam  and  Eve  awaken.      And  Milton,  to  increase 

See  the  two  Imaginary  Conversations,  "  Southey  and 
Landor,"  pp.  57—154,  vol.  ii.  Works  of  W.  S.  Landor,  Moxon's 
ed.  1846.     They  are  well  worth  reading. 


n6  MILTON.  [chap. 

the  pity  in  our  soul,  and  to  intensify  the  tragic 
horror  of  the  ruin,  paints  one  more  picture  of  these 
two,  in  their  charm  and  innocence  among  the  un- 
tainted flowers,  in  simple  work,  and  lovely  love,  and 
in  that  delight  of  love  and  interchange  of  thought 
that  often  stayed  their  labour,  while  they  worked 
together.  On  this  he  builds  the  simple  motive  of 
their  separation,  for  Eve  thinks  that  they  should 
divide  their  daily  toil.  The  proposal  and  its  answer 
lead  Milton  easily  to  develop  more  fully  the  characters 
of  Adam  and  Eve,  and  at  the  same  time  to  increase 
our  expectation  of  the  Fall,  for  Adam  refuses  Eve's 
request  through  fear  of  the  temptation  which  impends. 
Adam's  dread  and  Eve's  innocent  boldness  alike,  from 
different  points,  increase  our  pity,  and  the  play  of 
thought  between  them,  if  that  can  be  called  play 
which,  in  this  part  at  least  becomes  at  times  prosaic, 
touched  with  Adam's  lordly  domesticity,  still  more 
prepares  us  for  the  yielding  of  Eve  to  the  tempter. 
In  her  last  speech  but  one,  322-341,  she  loses  the 
tone  of  sinlessness  which  Milton  has  so  wonderfully 
as  yet  preserved — it  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  his  work 
— and  is  even  petulant.  She  leaves  Adam's  side  ;  and 
Milton  makes  his  last  and  loveliest  picture  of  her 
innocence  veiled  in  a  cloud  of  fragrance  among 
the  glowing  roses ;  nor  can  he  here  refrain  from 
painting  again  the  beauty  of  Paradise.  Her  loveliness 
•  is  heightened  when  we  see  her  through  the  eyes  or 
Satan,  and  find  him  lured  by  it  away  from  evil ;  and 
the  simile  of  her,  one  in  which  Milton  may  have 
described  some  quiet  farm  near  Horton,  with  its 
indwelling  maiden,  is  the  homeliest  and  the  most 
English  in  the  whole  of  his  work,  445-455. 

The  wavering  of  Satan,  his  half  repentance,  his 
fierce  resolve,  the  suggestion,  in  his  glistering  and 
tortuous  and  slow  approach,  of  the  qualities  of  evil, 
the  first  address  to  Eve,  are  done  with  Milton's 
astonishing  power,  and  we  enter  now  on  that  dis- 
course of  temptation  between  Satan  and  Eve,  in 
which,  I  think,  more  than  in  any  part  of  the  poem, 


tv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  117 

save  in  the  council  of  Hell,  the  force  of  Milton's  intel- 
lect is  most  supreme ;  yet  it  is  intellect  in  subjection 
to  the  rule  of  imagination.  Great  as  it  is,  the  art  is 
greater,  and  the  phrase  "  So  glozed  the  tempter,  and 
his  proem  tuned,"  makes  it  plain  that  Milton  meant 
this  to  be  a  careful  piece  of  work.  The  serpent  begins 
with  praise  of  her  beauty.  "  Only  one  to  see  thee !  God- 
dess." Eve's  vanity  is  touched,  but  she  expresses  it  as 
wonder  and  curiosity  as  to  how  he  came  to  speak.  The 
"spirited  sly  snake"  tells  his  story,  doubling  her 
curiosity,  and  with  a  quick  turn  strengthens  the  appeal 
to  vanity ;  "  Thus  made  wise  by  eating,  he  has  seen  all 
things  in  heaven  and  earth,  but  nothing  like  her, 
Sovran  of  creatures,  universal  dame."  The  action  is  then 
hurried, — Where  is  this  tree?  An  abrupt  description  of 
the  way  brings  us  to  it,  filled  with  a  happy  simile  of  the 
serpent's  head  glistering  like  a  misleading  marsh-fire. 
Eve  recognises  the  forbidden  tree,  and  starts  back. 
Not  eat  !  cries  the  serpent,  yet  lords  of  earth  and 
air;  and  then  when  Eve  says,  We  shall  die — collects 
himself  in  act  and  motion  like  an  orator  to  speak. 
The  simile  of  the  orator  weakens  the  action  of  the 
dialogue.  We  are  taken  too  far  away.  Even  here 
Milton  could  not  avoid  his  fault  of  digression,  and 
Athens  and  Rome  are,  with  a  certain  incongruity, 
brought  into  Paradise.  But  the  semblance  of  passion 
in  the  speech  of  Satan,  and  the  rhetorical  beginning 
are  finely  conceived  and  wrought.  As  to  the  argument 
680-732,  it  is  so  concentrated  that  to  analyse  it  would 
take  up  three  times  Milton's  space.  To  read  it  is  to 
gain  a  high  opinion  of  Eve's  intelligence.  When  at 
the  end  Satan  suggests  that  God  is  envious  of  them, 
he  uses  a  dead  argument,  for  Eve  could  know  nothing 
of  envy.  But  Milton,  working  at  this  white  heat,  can 
scarcely  be  wrong,  and  may  have  unconsciously  repre- 
sented Satan  as  borne  away  out  of  cool  argument  into 
passion  against  God,  and  into  that  passion  of  envy 
which  was  closest  to  his  heart.  Eve  still  pauses;  Satan's 
words  find  their  way  ;  her  eye  is  lured  to  the  fruit ; 
it  is  also  her  hour  of  food— for  Milton  heaps  up  his 


US  MILTON.  [chap. 

motives — and  she  muses  in  a  soliloquy.  She  poises 
the  arguments  to  and  fro,  appetite  and  curiosity  un- 
derneath. There  is  no  moral  struggle  of  feeling.  That 
and  its  passions  could  only  be  after  fall,  and  Milton 
has  striven  throughout  to  keep  them  apart  from  his 
representation  of  Adam  and  Eve.  The  intellectualism 
of  the  talk  of  Paradise,  and  its  occasional  coldness  and 
want  of  interest  is  owing  to  this.  Milton  has  been  shut 
out  up  to  this  time  from  all  the  vaster  tragedy  of  man, 
and  shut  out  by  the  necessity  of  being  true  to  his 
subject.  The  whole  of  Eve's  soliloquy,  with  the  one  ex- 
ception of  her  praise  of  the  serpent  for  his  want  of  envy, 
which  is  a  slip  of  Milton's,  is  purely  a  discourse  of  in- 
tellect. She  eats — Nature  sighs  through  all  her  works  ; 
she  eats  greedily,  wishing  for  knowledge  and  Godhead  ; 
but  Milton  marks  appetite  as  the  thing  for  which  she 
most  cares.  Her  first  thoughts  after  the  fatal  tasting  are 
those  of  an  intellect  quickened  into  subtilty  by  evil. 
The  tree  becomes  her  god,  dieted  wherewith  she 
will  be  as  the  gods.  Bolder  grown,  she  thinks  the 
gods  will  envy  her,  for  she  has  won  that  which 
was  not  in  their  power  to  give ;  they  envy  that 
they  cannot  give,  and  could  they  have  given  the 
gift,  the  tree  had  not  been  there.  She  separates 
God,  that  is,  from  His  creation.  She  exults  in  her 
wisdom,  though  it  is  secret,  and  the  word  catching  her 
thought,  she  thinks  she  herself  may  be  secret ;  and  as 
she  has  doubted  God's  omnipotence,  doubts  now  his 
omniscience,  and  passes  from  doubt  into  the  very 
temper  of  the  Tempter.  Satan  himself  might  have 
said — 

"  Other  care  perhaps 
May  have  diverted  from  continual  watch 
Our  great  Forbidder,  safe  with  all  his  spies 
About  him." 

Then  she  slips  into  womanhood ;  only,  in  her 
womanliness,  her  love  is  tainted  with  selfishness. 
She  asks,  how  she  will  appear  to  Adam  ?  Shall 
she  keep  the  odds  of  knowledge  to  draw  his 
love,    or    render    her   more    equal,    or    superior — a 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  119 

thing  not  undesirable.  But  should  God  have  seen, 
and  death  touch  her,  and  Adam  have  another  Eve  ;  it 
is  "a  death  to  think."  And  jealousy  decides  her  to 
make  Adam  share  her  fate.  She  loves  him  too  well  to 
live  or  die  without  him.  The  force  of  Milton's  work 
is  now  a  little  lessened,  but  rightly,  for  the  main  crisis 
is  over.  With  this  subtle  "  sciential  "  reasoning,  with 
Eve  returning  flushed  with  evil,  her  love  distempered, 
the  bough  of  evil  fruit  in  her  hand,  Milton  contrasts 
the  innocent  thoughts  and  love  of  Adam,  and  makes 
his  tender  picture  of  Adam,  carrying  like  a  child  a 
garland  for  Eve's  hair.  Hurried,  she  breaks  into  the 
tale,  and 

"  From  his  slack  hand  the  garland  wreathed  for  Eve 
Down  dropt,  and  all  the  faded  roses  shed." 

Then  follows  Milton's  wonderful  picture  of  passion  in 
its  weakness.  Adam's  love  is  at  first  mixed  with 
horror,  then  it  is  eager  to  secure  the  beloved,  then  it  is 
sure  that  it  must  sin  rather  than  lose  its  object  ;  To  be 
without  her — "To  live  again  in  these  wild  woods 
forlorn " — considering  with  passion's  intensity  the 
ghastly  blank  of  the  future — it  cannot  be  !  At  last  he 
makes  love's  first  reasoning — Nature  draws  me — "  bone 
of  my  bone  thou  art/'  And  having  started  argument, 
love,  as  usual,  argues  on,  but  for  nothing  but  itself. 
"The  thing  is  done  ;  who  can  recall  it  ?  The  serpent 
lives,  so  may  we  :  and  is  wise,  and  we  too  may  be 
wise,  wise  as  gods.  And  God  will  scarce  destroy  his 
prime  creation,  nay,  all  creation,  for  all  will  perish 
with  us  ;  and  He  will  be  loth  to  do  that,  for  so  the 
adversary  will  triumph  " — arguments  all  natural  if  he 
had  sinned ;  but  he  had  not.  Yet  Milton's  meaning 
is  clear — Adam  has  sinned  already  ;  in  the  weakness 
of  passion  he  had  already  eaten,  for  he  closes  with 
a  kind  of  scorn  for  all  his  reasoning.  "  However, 
I  with  thee  have  fixed  my  lot." 

Eve's  answer  is  superfluous  ;  it   repeats  and  more 
weakly,  the  previous   motives ;  the  two  last  lines  are 


120  MILTON.  [chap. 

the  only  forcible  ones,  988-89,  and  they  are  woman  all 
over. 

"On  my  experience,  Adam,  freely  taste, 
And  fear  of  death  deliver  to  the  winds." 

Earth  trembles  again  as  Adam  eats,  and  then 
Milton  makes  lust  the  first  consequence  of  the  sin ; 
and  for  those  who  wish  to  study  a  piece  of  Milton's 
favourite  contrasting,  it  is  interesting  to  compare 
Bk.  viii.  510,  &c,  with  this  in  Bk.  ix.  1034,  &c,  for 
Milton  meant  them  to  be  in  apposition.  Reaction 
follows,  and  with  reaction  Shame  arrives,  and  Adam 
finds  himself  in  her  grasp.  His  speech  is  naturally 
depressed,  but  rises  into  passion  again  in  the  pathetic 
outburst  of  regret,  "  How  shall  I  behold  the  face,"  and 
in  the  magnificent  lines  in  which  the  pathos  closes, 

"  Cover  me,  ye  pines, 
Ye  cedars,  with  innumerable  boughs 
Hide  me,  where  I  may  never  see  them  more." 

The  simile  of  the  Indian  fig  with  its  well-known 
line — "  High  overarcht,  and  echoing  walks  between," 
lifts  what,  in  the  following  passage,  seems  unworthy 
of  poetry  into  dignity,  but  the  finer  work  does 
not  again  begin  till  the  line  "  They  sat  them  down 
to  weep,"  when  Milton  describes  the  high  winds 
of  high  passions  that  arise  within  them,  and  sovran 
Reason  subjected  to  sensual  Appetite,  and  the 
estrangement  of  love.  The  blame  of  Adam  is  followed 
by  the  scornful  defence  and  retorted  blame  of  Eve, 
and  again  by  Adam's  incensed  defence  and  bitter 
accusation  of  Eve,  of  all  womanhood ;  "  and  of  their 
vain  contest  appeared  no  end."  It  seems  to  us, 
arriving  at  the  close  of  the  book  and  looking  back  to 
the  beginning,  as  if  we  had  travelled  over  a  world. 

Book  X.  and  the  two  which  follow  it  have  three 
aims,  all  of  them  of  epic  importance.  They  are,  first 
to  "  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man,"  a  part  of  the  sub- 
ject set  forth  by  Milton  at  the  beginning,  carried  out  in 
the  dialogues  between  the  Father  and  the  Son  in  the  pre- 
vious books,  and  insisted  on  in  these  three  last  books. 


IV.]  PARADISE  LOST.  121 

Seccndly,  to  complete  the  story  of  the  Fall  by  show- 
ing its  results,  and,  by  connecting  these  results  with 
the  whole  history  of  the  human  race,  to  swell  the 
importance  of  this,  the  central  event  of  the  poem. 
Thirdly,  the  purification  of  the  hero,  that  is,  of  man- 
kind, in  Adam  and  Eve.  These  three  are  mingled 
together  in  epic  narration,  but  as  they  appear  I  will 
draw  attention  to  them. 

The  first  result  of  the  Fall  is  the  departure  of  the 
Angels  from  Paradise  ;  but  though  Adam  loses  their 
companionship,  he  does  not  lose  their  interest  or  their 
pity.  All  Heaven  is  stirred  with  sorrow  for  Man  ;  and 
God  and  his  Son  meet  the  assembled  Angels  to  de- 
clare his  sentence.  The  whole  of  this  beginning,  down 
to  line  228,  when  the  Son  returns  from  sentencing 
Adam  and  Eve,  is  languid  and  weak.  It  is  as  if  Milton 
had  been  exhausted  by  the  stupendous  effort  he  made 
in  the  Ninth  Book.  There  is,  indeed,  a  fine  passage 
at  line  145,  but  throughout,  especially  where  Milton 
has  almost  textually  adapted  the  words  of  Scripture, 
the  verse  is  less  musical  and  more  cumbrous  than 
anywhere  else  in  the  poem.  Landor  complains,  with 
justice,  that  the  language  placed  in  the  Almighty's 
mouth,  at  615-640,  in  this  book  is  ugly.  He  might 
have  called  it,  and  with  more  justice,  unpoetical. 

We  find  Milton  again  in  his  power  at  line  230, 
where  Sin  and  Death  are  sitting  at  the  gates  of  Hell, 
that  now  stand  open  "  belching  outrageous  flame  far  into 
Chaos."  It  is  a  piece  of  noble  imagination,  where  Sin, 
not  knowing  of  the  sin  of  man,  yet  feels  its  attractive 
power  in  Hell,  and  when  Death  sniffs  from  afar  the  smell 
of  mortal  change  on  earth.  The  lines  that  picture  the 
grim  Feature  scenting  his  innumerable  prey,  and  the 
simile  which  heightens  their  force,  are  finer  in  their 
ghastliness  than  even  the  celebrated  passage  that  de- 
scribes Death  in  the  Second  Book.  Nor  is  the  power 
less,  when  Milton  tells  in  magnificent  verse  the 
making  of  the  causeway  between  Hell  and  the  round 
of  the  world.  Nothing  can  be  greater  than  the  image 
of  these  two  ghastly  forms  ranging  Chaos,  and  beating 


122  MILTON.  [CHAP. 

into  a  shoal  the  solid  and  the  dry,  bound  with  Death's 
petrific  mace  into  fastness,  wrought  into  a  mole  im- 
mense ;  though  one  cannot  but  wish  that  Xerxes  and 
his  bridge  were  removed  from  the  description.  At 
last,  Death  and  Sin  see,  how  vividly!  Satan  "  in 
likeness  of  an  angel  bright,  Betwixt  the  Centaur  and 
the  Scorpion  steering."  Satan's  speech  is  weighty  with 
scorn  and  power  and  cruel  joy.  There  is  true  devilry 
in  the  phrase.  "  Him  first  make  sure  your  thrall,  and 
lastly  kill." 

Milton's  imagination  fills  their  departure  with  ter- 
ror ;  the  whole  Heavens  are  blasted  as  they  pass, 
410-414.  Nor  is  Satan's  journey  to  Hell  less  instinct 
with  imagination :  we  hear  the  very  roar  of  Chaos 
beating  on  the  bridge  as  he  descends :  and  the 
picture  of  him  as  he  goes  disguised  through  empty 
Hell  and  suddenly  opens  forth  on  his  throne  from 
invisible  to  visible,  is  in  Milton's  mightiest  manner. 
It  is  "penetrative  imagination  "  that  makes  Satan  now 
resume  his  old  magnificence  in  aspect  and  in  speech. 
It  binds  together  his  image  at  the  beginning  and 
his  image  at  the  end,  and  a  full  picture  of  him 
is  left  with  us.  It  is  natural  also  that  he  should 
triumph  here;  he  had  reached  his  aim.  But  it  is 
only  to  heighten  the  catastrophe.  Scorn  he  has 
given,  and  brought  shame  on  man,  and  scorn  and 
shame  are  his  at  the  moment  of  his  greatest  pride. 
He  changes  to  a  monstrous  serpent,  and  all  his 
followers  change  with  him.  This  is  the  last,  the  com- 
plete fall  of  Satan.  We  hear  of  him  no  more ;  the 
result  of  the  Fall  is  wrought  in  him,  and  we  leave, 
hissing  and  shamed  and  tortured,  in  utter  degradation, 
him  whom  some  have  strangely  termed  the  true  hero 
of  Paradise  Lost. 

The  history  of  the  result  of  the  Fall  is  now  continued 
in  the  action  of  Sin  and  Death  in  Paradise,  and  when 
Sin,  in  their  fierce  talk,  says — "  Till  I  in  man  residing 
through  the  race," — she  strikes  one  of  the  key-notes 
of  the  following  books.  It  is  the  race,  and  the  effects  of 
sin  on  the  race,  that  dwell  through  all  the  talk  of  Adam 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  123 

and  Eve,  and  through  the  vision  Michael  shows  to 
Adam,  and  through  the  talk  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son.  It  is  not  Adam  only  that  Milton  now  sees.  It 
is  Adam  as  all  mankind. 

The  next  result  is  a  sorrowful  change  in  Nature. 
Through  this  which  rouses  Adam,  we  are  brought  back 
to  him,  our  true  subject.  Hid  in  shade  and  coming 
night,  he  speaks,  and  the  pathos  of  his  first  words  soon 
changes  into  his  habitual  reasoning.  It  is  dominated 
by  the  thought  of  the  race.  "  I  shall  send  on  the  curse, 
he  thinks,  and  all  the  curse  of  mankind  will  redound 
on  me.  Did  I  ask  God  to  make  me  ?  "  Yet,  as  he 
argues  on — the  doom  is  just.  "  Why  do  I  not  die  at 
once  ?  How  glad  would  lay  me  down,  as  in  my 
mother's  lap  ! "  most  pathetic  are  the  lines  !  "  May  I  not 
die  and  my  soul  live  on,  a  living  death  ?  No,  I  shall  all 
die,  God  cannot  make  death  deathless.  But  death 
may  not  be  at  one  stroke,  but  the  perpetuity  of  misery 
such  as  I  have  now  ?  Death  eternal  and  I  eternal,  and 
my  death  eternal  in  my  race,  cursed  and  corrupt 
through  me — me  utterly  miserable  and  lost  ! — '  from 
deep  to  deeper  plunged.'  On  me,  me  only,  let  the 
curse  fall."  All  night  long  he  mourns,  and  calls  on 
death  ;  and  the  closing  lines,  860-62,  are  full  of  Milton's 
lovely  tenderness,  exquisite  in  Adam's  reference  to 
outward  nature  after  all  this  inward  passion  of  thought 
and  pain. 

In  this,  his  Purification,  at  which  Milton  works 
throughout,  has  now  begun.  Adam  confesses  the  justice 
of  God,  and  his  desire  for  death  is  a  desire  of  self- 
sacrifice,  that  he  may  save  his  race.  One  drop  of 
evil  clings  to  him,  his  bitterness  against  that  "  bad 
woman " ;  till  that  is  gone  he  cannot  be  more  puri- 
fied, nor  yet  Eve.  Therefore  Milton,  knowing  that 
his  epic  work  was  now  to  ennoble  Eve  and  Adam, 
makes  Eve  draw  near.  Adam's  violent  speech  has 
been  much  blamed,  but  the  censors  have  forgotten 
how  entirely  natural  it  was,  nor  have  they  seen  the 
touch  in  it  of  love,  "  that  too  heavenly  form  ; "  nor 
that  it  is  so  fierce  that  love  must  be  there,  love  cruel 


124  MILTON.  [chap. 

as  the  grave.     No  woman  would  hate  Adam  for  it, 
nor  does  Eve.     The  reply  is  full  of  beautiful  love. 

"  While  yet  we  live,  scarce  one  short  hour  perhaps, 
Between  us  two  let  there  be  peace," 

are  words  that  reach  the  height  of  tragic  pathos. 
The  strongest  thing  in  her  speech,  as  in  Adam's,  is  her 
horror  that  her  sin  should  be  visited  on  the  race. 
When  she,  like  Adam,  says,  "  On  me,  me  only  let  the 
curse  fall,"  she  also  reaches  the  spirit  of  sacrifice,  and 
another  element  enters  into  her  purification  :  while 
Adam,  in  feeling  love  again  fill  his  heart  for  Eve, 
steps  into  a  higher  life.  Nothing  can  be  more  careful 
than  Milton's  work  in  all  this  part  of  his  subject.  Still 
dwelling  on  their  wish  to  save  their  descendants  from 
the  results  of  their  fall,  Eve,  impetuously  speaking, 
proposes  to  Adam  childlessness,  or  suicide.  Adam's 
love  rises  higher  and  he  gains  admiration  of  her 
character.  Another  poetic  necessity  is  satisfied  in 
this  :  but  his  reason,  still  keeping  close  to  the 
thought  of  the  race,  answers  Eve,  "  If  we  are  childless, 
the  promised  seed  will  not  redeem  mankind."  The 
spirit  of  sacrifice  in  them  both  now  works  further 
results.  They  think  of  the  promise,  of  the  pity  already 
shown  them,  and  penitence  and  prayer  begin  ;  and  the 
book  ends  leaving  them  prostrate  where  they  sinned/' in 
sorrow  unfeigned,  humiliation  meek." 

I  have  dwelt  long  on  this,  because  it  is  a  part 
of  Milton's  epic  work  which  I  do  not  remember 
has  been  much,  if  at  all,  treated  of.  Yet  it  fills 
this  book  and  the  next ;  and  the  conclusion  of 
the  whole  poem  is  its  conclusion.  Had  not  the 
purification  of  the  hero,  to  use  the  term,  been 
made  foremost  in  these  books,  there  would  have  been 
little  use  for  them.  Had  it  not  been  there,  had  the 
poem  ended  at  the  Ninth  Book  with  some  short  con- 
clusion, the  complete  epic  character,  supposing  man- 
kind, in  Adam  and  Eve,  to  be  the  hero,  would  have, 
I  think,  been  wanting  to  the  whole  poem. 

Book  XI.  carries  on  the  three  aims  I  have  men- 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  125 

tioned,  and  Man  is  still  the  hero,  still  the  central 
figure.  Their  "  port  is  not  of  mean  suitors  "  when 
they  pray  ;  Heaven  is  still  engaged  about  them ;  and 
Milton  makes  the  Son  of  God  say  to  the  Father  that 
their  end  is  to  be  u  made  one  with  me  as  I  with  thee." 
The  discourse  of  the  expulsion  takes  up  the  first 
part  of  the  book,  and  the  ruling  note  of  it  is  struck 
— as  also  of  the  close  of  the  poem — in  the  line — 

"  So  send  them  forth,  though  sorrowing,  yet  in  peace." 

In  Paradise  the  morning  has  come,  and  Adam  and 
Eve,  softened  by  penitence,  are  further  purified  by 
Milton.  So  much  of  Paradise  has  already  returned 
that  Adam  has  seen  a  vision  of  God,  and  with  it,  has 
felt  peace.  Then  his  honour  for  Eve  deepens,  for  he 
remembers  the  promise  that  she  shall  be  the  source  of 
redemption  :  and  Eve  herself  feels  that,  having  been 
the  Bringer  of  Death,  she  is  now  made  the  Source 
of  Life.  This  great  idea  purifies  them.  The  pathetic 
contrast  which  follows  between  Eve's  hopes  of  pleasant 
toil,  as  of  old,  in  Paradise,  and  nature's  contradiction  of 
her  hopes,  is  done  with  that  grand  simplicity  which  is 
Milton's  own  in  pathos.  The  picturesque  description 
of  the  eagle  and  the  lion  driving  their  prey,  two  birds,  / 
a  hart  and  hind — is  lifted  into  the  realm  of  the  imagi- 
nation by  the  suggestion  in  it  of  the  coming  expulsion  ; 
for  the  prey  is  driven  to  the  eastern  gate.  Another 
vivid  contrast  follows.  In  the  East,  whither  the 
guilty  are  to  go,  the  sun  is  darkened  at  morn ;  but 
the  west  is  all  ablaze,  whence  comes  Michael,  the  min- 
ister of  expulsion.  Another  of  Milton's  picturesque 
methods  is  used,  when  he  makes  our  eyes  follow 
through  more  than  ten  lines  the  approach  of  the  arch- 
angel through  the  garden.  We  know  from  the  force 
with  which  Milton  paints  the  angel,  how  glad  he  is  to 
do  it,  but  he  does  not  forget  that  Adam  is  changed, 
and  Michael  comes  now,  not  as  an  angel,  but  as  a  man. 
The  sentence  is  followed  by  that  pathetic  cry  of  Eve, 
lovelier  and  lovelier  in  its  tenderness  till  the  last  and 
loveliest  lines.     Nor  is  Adam's  answer  in  its  close  less 


1 


126  MILTON.  [chap. 

beautiful  and  tender,  though  it  is  made  distinct  from 
Eve's  speech  by  the  note  of  manliness.  Another 
element  of  purification  is  marked  in  this  reply.  The 
devotion  of  worship  has  come,  remorse  is  changed 
into  the  memory  of  love,  and  that  into  love  itself. 
Lastly,  one  of  the  deepest  thoughts  of  Milton's  inner 
life  fills  five  lines  of  Michael's  answer,  360-65,  and 
then  the  angel  leads  Adam  to  the  Mount  of  Vision. 

That  Vision  is  introduced  not  only  to  reveal  the 
results  of  the  Fall,  but  to  work  out  still  further 
the  purification  of  Adam.  Milton  dwells  on  this 
i  with  care  360-65.370-76.  There  is  too  much  geo- 
graphical de<taTT""aTme  beginning,  but  Milton  loved 
his  roll  of  names,  and  we  may  well  afford  them 
room.  The  first  picture  is  of  Cain  and  Abel  and  the 
murder.  It  is  short ;  but  Milton's  long  experience  in 
choosing  the  right  things  to  describe  so  as  to  set  the 
imagination  of  the  reader  to  create  the  whole,  the 
exquisite  selectiveness  of  his  art  is  nowhere  better 
shown  than  in  this  picture  and  the  third  (555-65).  The 
lazar-house  is  not  of  the  same  quality  ;  if  ^eems  uver- 
worked ;  we  know  he  added  to  it :  and  the  lines  of 
most  interest  are  those  at  the  close  of  the  discourse 
on  death,  in  which  we  seem  to  read  the  temper  of 
Milton's  sonnet  at  the  age  of  twenty-three  deepened 
now  in  his  old  age. — 

"  Nor  love  thy  life,  nor  hate  ;  but  what  thou  liv'st 
Live  well ;  how  long  or  short  permit  to  Heaven." 

The  picture  of  the  corrupt  civilisation  which  follows 
the  union  of  the  children  of  Seth  and  of  Cain  is 
Milton's  reproduction  in  history  of  the  spirit  of  Belial's 
speech  in  the  Second  Book,  as  the  next  picture  of  War 
and  Injustice  realizes  the  spirit  of  Moloch's  speech, 
and  the  next  of  Evil  Peace  the  spirit  of  Mammon's 
speech ;  and  it  is  worth  while  to  compare  the  speeches 
with  the  pictures.  The  reigns  of  luxurious  art,  of 
violence,  and  of  wealth  are  all  finely  wrought,  but  with- 
out precise  force,  as  if  they  were  seen  by  the  imagination, 
not  in  sight,  but  in  a  dream ;  not  in  reality,  but  in  a 


IV.]  PARADISE  LOST.  127 

picture.  They  are  so  seen;  but  it  is  just  because  they 
are  so  seen  that  they  lack  power.  Then  follows  the 
vision  of  the  flood,  full  of  fine  lines,  enough  to  sup- 
ply many  poets  with  material ;  yet  the  theological 
commentary  of  Adam  and  Michael  weakens  the  effect, 
and  the  passage  falls  below  Milton's  power.  The 
vision  of  the  rainbow  and  Adam's  joy  thereat  end 
the  book. 

Book  XII.    closes    this    eventful    history.      The 
Vision  ceases ;  and  Michael  narrates,  in  a  rapid  sketch, 
the  further  results  of  the  Fall,  and  of  God's  action, 
continued  through  the  history  of  man.     The  promise 
given  to  Eve  is  fulfilled  in  the  coming  of  the  greater 
Man.     Sin  and  death  are  overthrown  in  His  sacrifice 
and  a  part  of  the  blessings  lost  at  the  Fall  is  redeemed. 
The  history  of  the  Christian  Church  is  then  told  un- 
til the  final  victory  over  Satan  at  the  judgment-day, 
when  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  arise  and  all  that 
was  Lost  is  Won.     It  is  difficult  to  say  that  all  this  I 
is   not   necessary.     It   completes  the  subject  of  the, 
vindication  of  God's  ways  to  man  ;  the  canvas  is  filled! 
not   only   with   man   conquered,  but  with    man    the* 
conquerour  :  the  whole  earth  now  made  new — 

"  Shall  be  one  Paradise,  far  happier  place 
Than  this  of  Eden,  and  far  happier  days." 

But  to  praise  it  in  comparison  with  the  rest  is  impossible. 
The  interest  is  only  that  of  an  annalist's  tale.  It  is  a 
pity  the  poem  should  pass  to  its  close  through  this 
slow  and  dragging  narration  j  and  the  political 
and  religious  opinions  of  Milton  lower  the  due  dignity 
of  the  Archangel's  words  by  introducing  too  personal 
and  too  controversial  an  element.  At  the  end  of  it  the 
further  purification  of  Adam  is  insisted  on — 557  —  573, 
and  we  are  made  to  understand  that  thiT  was~"aTr" 
important  in  Milton's  eyes  by  the  sayings  of  Michael — 
That  now  Adam  had  attained  the  sum  of  wisdom, 
better  than  the  knowledge  he  sought  of  old  from 
Raphael ;  the  wisdom  of  obedience  and  love  of  God,  in 
contrast  with  the  false  knowledge  won  by  disobedience 
9 


128  MILTON.  [chap. 

from  the  tree — and,  That  when  deeds  answerable  to 
that  wisdom  are  added  to  it — 

"  Then  wilt  thou  not  be  loth 
To  leave  this  Paradise,  but  shalt  possess 
A  Paradise  within  thee,  happier  far." 

The  same  ennobling  and  purifying  power  of  thought 
has  been  with  Eve,  dreaming  in  her  sleep  while  Adam 
saw  and  heard ;  and  both  are  in  possession  of  wisdom 
and  inward  Paradise,  when  they  leave  the  Tree  of 
Knowledge  and  the  earthly  Paradise  behind.  It  is 
the  true  close  of  the  Poem — the  epic  purification  of 
mankind. 

Then  comes  the  last  scene  :  Adam,  full  of  love,  runs 
before  the  angel  to  waken  Eve  ;  she  is  ready  to  go  with 
him,  for  he  is  all  things  to  her,  all  places.  The  cheru- 
bim descend,  in  front  the  brandisht  sword  of  God  ; 
and  through  the  eastern  gate  "  our  lingering  parents  " 
disappear.     They  look   back,  and  see — 

"  The  gate 
"With  dreadful  faces  thronged,  and  fiery  arms," 

and  pass  away ;  and  on  our  minds — all  else  gone, 
Satan  and  Hell,  God  and  Heaven  and  Paradise  and 
Angels — the  image  of  Mankind  alone  remains. 


The  characters  of  Adam  and  Eve  and 
Satan  are  worth  separate  consideration,  and  I  have 
kept  them  for  the  most  part  out  of  my  analysis  of 
the  conduct  of  the  poem.  I  could  not  do  so  alto- 
gether, and  a  few  repetitions  are  unavoidable. 

Adam  and  Eve. — Adam  is  our  primitive  great 
sire  and  Eve  the  mother  of  mankind.  They  are  not 
intended  in  any  sense  to  represent  men  and  women 
such  as  we  know  them,  worn  with  the  wars  of 
thought  and  passion,  made  complex  or  dwarfed 
by  civilisation,  but  the  archetypal  man  and  woman, 
fresh   from   the   hand    of    God.      They  are  primal, 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  129 

and  all  in  them  is  primal.  There  is  nothing  in  all  , 
art  which  resembles  this  great  outline  of  Milton,  an 
outline  as  of  early  gods,  except  Michel's  Angelo's  two 
frescoes  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  of  Adam  and  of  Eve 
coming  into  life.  These  have  the  same  ineffable  breath ( 
of  first  humanity  by  which  the  Adam  and  Eve  of  Milton  1 
live.  Both  the  man  and  the  woman  are  sinless,  without 
sin's  complexity  and  its  knowledge  ;  both  are  free  intel- 
lectually and  morally :  both  are  perfect  in  health,  and  j 
have  in  full  degree  all  the  natural  passions.  In  both,  f 
Reason  and  Will  are  set  as  lords  over  their  nature  ;  and 
the  reason,  the  will,  and  the  passions  act  as  Milton  sup- 
posed them  to  act  in  two  fresh,  simple,  and  perfect 
persons  who  are  wholly  without  experience.  Milton 
has,  with  extraordinary  self-restraint,  kept  himself 
within  the  necessary  limits  of  this  subject.  When  he 
does  not  succeed  in  doing  so,  the  transgression  is  so 
remarkable  that  we  are  made  to  realise  its  rarity.  Of 
course,  such  limits  prevent  his  delineation  from  interest- 
ing those  who  care  only  for  the  agony  or  joy  of  the 
human  struggle  as  it  is  seen  in  CEdipus,  or  Hamlet,  or 
Faust,  or  for  the  storm  of  human  action  as  seen  in 
Achilles  or  y£neas  ,  but  if  we  can  leave  these  more 
exciting  phases  of  human  life  aside  for  a  little,  it  may 
give  us  pleasure  at  last  to  look  on  Milton's  first  man 
and  first  woman  while  as  yet  their  humanity  had 
neither  agony  nor  action. 

They  were  then  made  lords  of  all,  the  image  of  j 
their  glorious  Maker,  having  truth,  wisdom,  "  sanctitude 
severe  and  pure,"  and  placed  in  freedom.  Adam  is  ' 
formed  for  contemplation  (intellectual  strength  of 
reason),  for  valour  (manly  strength  with  tenderness). 
Both  these  are  the  grounds  of  that  absolute  rule  which 
his  "fair  large  front  and  eye  sublime"  declared.  Next 
to  reason  and  strength  in  him  is  Love,  and  love  after- 
wards intensified  by  passion  towards  woman.  Adam's 
highest  relation  is  not  to  her,  but  to  God  ;  and 
strength,  and  reason,  and  love  are  to  be  held  in 
subjection  to  God's  will,  because  that  will  is  good- 
ness.    Obedience  is  then  his  first  and  his  only  duty. 


130  MILTON.  [chap. 

It  includes  all  others.  That  is  Milton's  conception 
of  absolute  Manhood.  In  the  Fall,  the  vehemence 
of  passionate  love  overthrows  obedience  to  God,  and 
reason,  and  strength. 

\f  Eve  is  formed  for  softness  and  sweet  attractive 
grace;  perfect  in  beauty,  that  from  ''about  her  shot 
darts  of  desire  ;"  as  keen  to  desire  all  things  as  fit  to 
awake  desire  :  subject  to  the  man  as  he  to  God;  but 
her  subjection  "  demanding  gentleness,"  and  "  yielded 
with  coy  submission,  modest  pride  ; "  full  of  love,  but 
love  given  "  with  sweet  reluctant  amorous  delay."  As 
deep  as  reason  is  in  Adam,  so  deep  is  curiosity  in 
Eve.  This  in  Milton's  absolute  Womanhood.  Finally 
the  vehemence  of  curiosity  overthrows,  at  the  Fall, 
love,  and  subjection  to  man,  and  obedience  to  God. 

In  Adam's  very  first  speech — IY.  410^— he  reasons 
through  his  own  state  and  his  duties  to  God,  but  he 
begins  it  with  his  love  to  Eve.  Eve,  answering,  does 
not  reason  at  all.  She  looks  to  Adam  as  he  to  God, 
declares  her  relation  to  him  and  then  glides  at  once 
into  womanhood,  the  pure  primal  womanhood  as 
Milton  saw  it ;  which  delighted  to  recall  the  first  day 
of  her  life,  dwelling  on  its  details  one  by  one ;  which 
loved  the  charm  of  the  past,  and  to  paint  it  as  a 
picture ;  which  records  a  touch  of  happy  and  inno- 
cent vanity,  lost  at  once,  when  she  is  wooed,  in 
yielding  and  delighted  love.  In  neither  of  them  is 
there  a  single  trace  of  the  wilder  passions  of  the 
soul  which  arise  from  unregulated  sense  or  from  un- 
regulated questioning.     Both   are  kept  quite   simple 

'  and  natural.  Their  love  is  tender  and  intelligent,  but 
it  is  also  passionate.  Pure  sensuousness  and  deliberate 
bodily  passion  are  made  by  Milton  to  belong  to  the 
very  essence  of  their  love.  It  is  a  marvel  how  he  has 
kept  it  free,  and  large,  and  pure,  yet  left  it  sensuous. 
But  there  is  a  difference  in  their  love.  Eve,  in  her 
womanhood,  plays  round  her  love,  and  adorns  it 
and  makes  it  complex — but  her  love  is  never  intense. 
Adam's  love  has  intensity ;  he  only  sees  Eve  :  but  she 
decks  the  arbour  of  love  with  flowers,  and  in  one  of 


TV.]  PARADISE  LOST.  131 

her  loveliest  outbursts  (iy.  G^g)  she,  looking  far  more 
deeply  than  Adam  ever  does  into  the  beauty  of  the 
outward  world,  brings  all  nature  and  all  its  life  from 
morn  till  night  before  her  hearer,  that  she  may  illus- 
trate and  enhance  her  love ;  nor  does  Milton  fail  to 
mark  her  soft  attractive  grace  in  the  sweetness  of  his 
verse. 

Adam,  in  his  answer,  loves  this  quality  in  Eve 
— "  Daughter  of  man  and  God,  accomplisht  Eve," 
but  himself  delights  more  to  speak  of  the  causes  of 
things  and  their  use.  The  speech  of  both  when  this 
first  talk  is  closed  is  worthy  of  these  two  sinless 
figures.  They  are  happy  in  God  and  one  another,  but 
they  are  also  happy,  and  this  is  one  of  the  ground 
tones  of  their  characters,  in  their  hope  of  a  plenteous 
race  to  issue  from  their  love.  On  the  foundation  of 
this  thought  Milton  builds  another  description  of 
their  passionate  love. 

At  their  next  awaking  in  the  Fifth  Book  it  is  still  | 
love   which  fills  the    scene,  still    the   grace    of  Eve's  \ 
beauty,  still  the  delight  of  desire   in  Adam.     His  call  ' 
to  her  to  waken  is  the  pure  call  of  healthy  and  pas- 
sionate joy,  and  in  its  innocent  pleasure  in  the  day  and 
the  work  of  the  day  seems   childish  till  we  begin  to 
feel  its  large  simplicity.     The  dream  that  Eve  tells  is 
meant  to  show  some   of  the  roots  of  her  character ; 
those  where  she  is  weakest.      In  jt  her  love  of  beauty 
is  placed  even  before  her  curiosity  of  appetite  and  of 
the  unknown.     That  love  of  nature,  so  strong  in  her, 
is  touched ;  that  love  of  her  own  beauty,  which,  still 
innocent,  was  not  "yet  vanity,  is  also  touched  here,  as 
it  is  in   her   first  account   of    herself.     The  love  of 
power  which  Milton  held  to  be  inherent  in  woman,  the 
desire  of  the  forbidden,  the  stirring  of  appetite  through 
beauty,  are  all  made  prominent.     Yet   Eve  is  saved 
from  having  them  sinfully,  while  we  are  made  to  recog- 
nise their  germs  in  her,  because  her  dream  is  not  repre- 
sented as  her  own,  but  as  the  work  of  Satan.     Adam's 
answer  still  shows  him,  not  complex  like  Eve,  but  simple; 
made  only  as  yet  of  two  things — of  reason  and  of  love. 


132  MILTON.  [chap. 

Both  reason  and  love  are  almost  in  extremes  in  him. 
Were  it  not  for  his  love,  his  discursiveness  would  be  dull ; 
were  it  not  for  the  reason  in  him,  his  love  would  be 
weak.  After  this  talk  they  are  both  lifted  out  of 
criticism  by  their  splendid  Psalm  of  Praise.  It  adds 
to  the  great  impression  of  this  primitive  man  and 
woman  that  they  should  both  have,  as  native  gifts, 
the  power  of  rapture  and  the  power  of  eloquence. 

In  the  association  with  Raphael  their  characters 
are  further  developed.  Eve  loves  to  put  things  into 
form ;  she  is  taken  up  with  the  pleasure  of  hospitality, 
of  making  things  bright  and  ready,  of  giving  happi- 
ness. We  see  that  her  gardening  is  her  joy,  that  she 
treats  the  flowers  like  children,  and  delights  in  seeing 
them  also  grow  and  shape  themselves  at  her  will.  She 
loves  to  feel  in  this  way  her  power.  Adam,  on  the 
contrary,  is  all  astir  within  his  brain.  No  sooner  is 
the  meal  over,  than  he  will  not  let  the  occasion  pass 
to  know  things  above  the  world ;  he  would,  in  con- 
templation of  created  things,  by  steps  ascend  to  God. 
He  cannot  rest  for  the  "thirst  he  has  of  knowledge," 
and  when  he  knows,  he  reasons,  argues,  speculates, 
entering  on  "  studious  thoughts  abstruse,"  on  quaint 
speculations  finally  as  to  whether  the  angels  loved. 
Withal  he  does  not  lose  courtesy,  a  noble  patriarchal 
courtesy,  and  out  of  it  grows. one  of  the  few  speeches 
in  which  Adam  is  made  to  have  a  poetic  turn  on  any 
subject  save  a  lofty  one  (vii.  98 — 108). 

Meanwhile  Eve,  delighted  with  the  story  of  the 
War  and  the  Creation,  moves  away  when  the  con- 
versation turns  to  scientific  matters.  It  is  not,  Milton 
is  anxious  to  say,  that  she  is  not  capable  of  under- 
standing these  things,  but  that  she  reserved  that 
pleasure. 

"  Her  husband  the  relater  she  preferred 
Before  the  angel,  and  of  him  to  ask 
Chose  rather  ;  he,  she  knew,  would  intermix 
Grateful  digressions,  and  solve  high  dispute 
With  conjugal  caresses  :  from  his  lip 
Not  words  alone  pleased  her." — Bk.  viii.  50. 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  133 

It  is  primaeval  womanhood,  and  the  picture  is  worthy 
of  the  first  woman,  when  in  lowliness  majestic  she 
rose  from  her  seat,  and  with  "  Grace  that  won  who 
saw  to  wish  her  stay,"  went  among  her  fruits  and 
flowers — 

11  With  goddess-like  demeanour  forth  she  went, 
Not  unattended,  for  on  her  as  queen 
A  group  of  winning  Graces  waited  still, 
And  from  about  her  shot  darts  of  desire." 

Over  against  this  stately  and  noble  beauty,  the  home 
of  desire,  yet  full  of  thought  and  gentleness,  is  set  in  all 
the  conversation  with  Raphael  the  steady,  grave,  secure 
intelligence  of  Adam  ;  who  lets  his  fancy  rove  when 
it  pleases  him  (viii.  185,  &c),  but  is  always  master 
of  it  to  bring  it  home  to  the  uses  of  daily  life. 
Afterwards,  in  contrast  to  the  picture  Eve  has  made 
in  the  fourth  book  of  her  coming  into  life  is  set  the 
picture  of  the  coming  into  life  of  Man,  when  Adam, 
loving  his  socfal  talk,  delays  the  angel  to  tell  the  story 
of  his  own  creation.  I  can  never  read  it  (Bk.  viii.  250, 
&c.)  without  wonder  and  joy  at  anything  so  great  and 
fine,  without  reverence  for  the  character  which  con- 
ceived it.  It  is  the  true  picture  of  absolute,  first  man- 
hood, if  we  think  of  it  as  made  at  once  out  of 
God.  The  physical  man  is  first  touched,  and  we  see 
him  laid  in  balmy  sweat,  just  born  to  life.  His  eyes 
are  fixed  on  heaven  ;  he  springs  to  his  feet ;  he  sees 
all  things — not  their  beauty,  as  Eve  saw,  but  their 
life — and  at  the  sight,  and  at  himself — Joy,  first  of 
all  the  passions,  springs  into  being.  He  peruses 
himself;  tries  his  powers,  walking,  running;  tries 
speech  ;  finds  it  and  intelligence  ;  names  all  things  ; 
breaks  into  a  burst  of  delight ;  then  reasons  at  once 
from  creation  to  a  God.  Who  is  God  is  his  first 
question?  Why  do  I  live,  why  so  happy?  is  his 
second.  Then  comes  pensiveness,  the  first  forerunner 
of  the  sense  of  loneliness,  and  he  falls  to  sleep. 
Who  else  but  Milton  could  have  done  this?  Not 
Shakspere,   his    soul    was    too    involved    with    the 


134  MILTON.  [chap. 

trouble  and  doubt  of  the  world.  I  wonder  if  any 
one  but  a  blind  man  could  have  done  it. 

Appetite  then  arises,  Adam  eats  and  wakes :  and  swift 
following  is  that  charming  scene,  the  first  longing  of 
native  love  for  its  mate,  the  first  stirring  of  vague 
desire,  the  first  loneliness  of  man's  heart,  the  root  of 
that  love  which  is  the  deepest  thing  in  Adam's  cha- 
racter. And  God,  here  alone  in  Paradise  Lost,  seen 
in  the  solemn  human  beauty  which  we  can  love, 
gives  him  his  desire  : — 

' '  And  the  Vision  bright, 
As  with  a  smile  more  brightened,  thus  replied." 

And  when  Adam  presses  for  a  companion,  answers — 

"  A  nice  and  subtle  happiness  I  see 
Thou  to  thyself  proposest." 

No  one  but  Milton  could  have  touched  this  scene. 
It  plays  with  the  Highest,  but  does  not  lower 
Him,  And  the  strange  humour  of  the  dialogue  is  full 
of  grave  loveliness,  and  of  the  grandeur  of  God  and 
the  first  Man,  till  we  come  to  the  last  and  loveliest 
lines — 

"  What  next  I  bring  shall  please  thee,  be  assured, 
Thy  likeness,  thy  fit  help,  thy  other  self, 
Thy  wish  exactly  to  thy  heart's  desire." 

All  the  first  thoughts,,  all  the  primal  desires  of  a 
man  are'sketched  in  this  scene.  Nor  is  the  art  less 
which  makes  Adam  only  long  to  fill  his  loneliness, 
which  gives  him  only  a  vague  want.  It  is  different 
when  he  sees  the  woman,  470,  &c.  Then  vague 
desire  realises  what  it  means ;  passion  is  born,  that 
passion  of  which  Adam  speaks  till  the  close  of  the 
book,  on  which  Milton  insists  as  the  conqueror  of 
reason,  as  the  point  where  Adam  alone  was  weak. 
In  the  midst  of  this  wonderful  sketch,  Milton,  by 
Adam's  voice,  draws  his  intensest  picture  of  Eve,  of 
the  "  eternal  feminine,"  as  Goethe  would  call  it.  It 
is  a  curious  touch  that  while  Adam  confesses  the  weak- 
ness of  his  nature  under  passion,  he  reasons  on  it  as 
if  it  were  something  outside  of  himself.     In  Adam 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  135 

reason  acts  separately  from  passion.  Even  when  he 
is  swept  away  by  passion,  his  reason  keeps  its  clear- 
ness while  it  abdicates.     It  is  the  opposite  in  Eve. 

When  we  next  meet  them,  Eve  wishes  to  leave 
Adam,  in  order  to  divide  their  work.  Her  character 
already  begins  to  lose  simplicity.  Milton  certainly 
means  to  suggest  in  the  womanhood  he  here  draws 
a  desire  "of  some  change,  a  vague  weariness  and  impa- 
tience of  the  continuous  everyday  order  of  life.  It 
is  a  part  of  Eve's  deep  curiosity  which  here  appears. 
Unconsciously  deceiving  herself,  she  feels  and  repre- 
sents her  dim  weariness  of  life  as  desire  to  do  the 
work  of  the  garden  better  by  dividing  it.  Adam 
is  acute  enough  to  see  this  ;  if  he  did  not  we  should 
think  less  of  his  intelligence.  Bk.  ix.  247,  8.  Then 
Milton  paints  the  woman's  self-confidence;  her  readi- 
ness to  go  and  meet  temptation,  the  readiness  of  un- 
reasoning daring ;  the  woman's  common  laughter  at 
the  man's  prudence  and  fear.  It  is  otherwise  with 
Adam.  He  does  fear,  he  reasons  about  love ;  really 
loves  more  than  Eve;  begs  her,  and  warns  her,  to 
stay,  but  when  she  reproaches  him  in  the  woman's  way 
for  mistrust,  excuses  himself,  cannot  stand  her  frown, 
argues,  but  yields  at  last.  She  has  her  fancy  ;  she  will 
have  it ;  she  can  think  of  nothing  else  ;  opposition  only 
fixes  her. 

In  her  talk  with  Satan  Milton  emphasises  her  yield- 
ing to  the  persuasion  of  the  new  and  strange.  "Into 
the  heart  of  Eve  his  words  made  way,"  because  she 
was  so  wonderstruck  and  so  pleased  to  wonder.  Her 
child-like  vanity,  her  woman's  love  of  power,  are 
now-  no  longer  innocent.  Satan  calls  her  empress, 
sovran  of  creatures,  goddess  among  gods, — and 
then,  when  she  yields,  all  her  qualities  rush  into 
their  extremes.  Appetite  becomes  sensual,  curiosity 
becomes  diseased  desire,  the  desire  of  having  her  own 
way  sets  her  into  rebellious  contempt.  God's  forbid- 
ding commends  the  fruit  more,  infers  its  good  and 
their  want.  The  whole  of  her  argument  is  nothing 
more  than — "  I  wish  it." 


I36  MILTON.  [chap. 

And  when  she  has  taken  the  fruit  she  knows  no 
mean — she  is  wholly  in  her  sin,  all  thought  is  lost,  all 
restraint,  there  is  no  vision  of  anything  but  self; 
not  of  God,  nor  of  Adam,  only  of  satiated  joy;  until 
the  thought  of  another  Eye  by  the  side  of  Adam 
makes  her  sick  with  jealousy.  When  she  returns  to 
Adam,  she  has  the  boldness  of  the  woman  who,  having 
done  wrong,  and  while  the  excitement  of  wrong  con- 
tinues, glories  in  her  sin.  She  appeals  to  the  man  to 
do  wrong  also,  and  to  his  weakest  point — Sin  now, 
because  you  love  me.  As  to  Adam,  he  is  repre- 
sented as  absolutely  in  her  power  through  passion. 
Resistance  drops  into  dismay,  and  dismay  rises  out 
of  itself  into  passion.  Then  manhood  comes  in. 
Having  once  resolved  to  give  way  to  passion  even 
in  sin— he  becomes  calm,  and  reasons  on  the  whole 
question. 

But  he  reasons  differently  from  Eve.  She  has  no 
fear  ;  Adam  has.  Eve  in  the  pleasure  of  curiosity  and 
excitement  does  not  and  did  not  look  forward.  Adam 
thinks  of,  and  dreads  the  future ;  but  his  love  is  more 
than  his  dread.  Not  surprised,  but  with  his  eyes 
wide  open,  he  sins ;  not  deceived,  but  fondly  over- 
come. And  then,  the  pure  passion  of  their  lives 
changes  to  impure,  and  the  Fall  is  complete.  True 
criticism  will  recognise  that  the  whole  of  this,  given 
the  conditions,  is  as  fine,  in  its  grave,  though  slow- 
moving  manner,  as  anything  in  Shakspere. 

After  the  fall  there  is  a  languor  in  the  characterisa- 
tion of  Adam  and  Eve.  Milton  had  so  long  con- 
sidered them  and  built  them  up  the  foundation  of 
innocence,  that  when  he  has  to  alter  that  foundation 
altogether,  he  is  troubled,  and  so  troubled  as  to  become 
languid.  I  is  a  want  of  dramatic  inventiveness,  one 
of  Milton's  greatest  wants.  The  evil  now  added  to 
their  characters  does  not  make  them,  as  it  would 
naturally  do,  more  complex.  They  remain  simple,  and 
the  evil  is  rather  their  clothing  than  of  themselves. 
We  might  easily  make  this  into  a  reason  for  praise, 
and  declare  that  Milton  kept  them  simple  on  purpose, 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  137 

because  evil  was  so  new  to  them.  But  that  would 
be  over-subtle  and  untrue.  He  is  right  in  keeping 
the  grand  lines  of  their  primal  nature,  but  he  was 
perhaps  unable  to  bring  in  the  other  elements.  One 
thing  alone  is  added  to  their  characters — pathetic 
power,  and  it  is  nobly  added. 

The  change  itself  and  the  purification  of  their 
characters  through  repentance  I  have  already  dwelt 
on.  Adam  is  the  first  to  repent,  the  first  to  act, 
the  first  to  reproach.  He  knows  his  moral  state, 
and  he  knows  its  end ;  Eve  only  knows  it  through 
Adam.  The  recrimination  which  follows,  Bk.  ix. 
1 135,  &c,  is  neither  of  Adam  nor  of  Eve  specially. 
It  is  of  essential  human  nature ;  it  is  the  simple 
ordinary  dull  result  of  mutual  guilt  which  is  here 
represented.  A  touch  in  Adam's  outburst  against 
Eve  in  the  next  book  angrily  exaggerates  one  of  the 
ground  tones  of  Milton's  character  of  Eve — "  longing 
to  be  seen — even  by  the  Devil  himself." 

Eve  still  remains  the  most  interesting;  she  is  always 
more  complex  than  Adam.  Adam  is,  as  before,  made 
up  of  the  pure  reason  and  of  love  to  Eve  ;  and  he  sees 
things  and  their  true  relations  even  more  clearly  than 
before  the  Fall,  because  passion,  having  suffered  from 
itself,  does  not  now  master  reason.  This  point  Milton 
has  clearly  marked,  but  it  is  different  with  Eve.  Sin 
has  made  Adam  less  but  Eve  more  passionate.  Having 
suffered,  she  feels  everything  more  keenly  than  she 
did  before  she  was  guilty;  she  reasons  less,  and  sees 
things  less  plainly ;  but  she  loves  more.  She  has 
gained  intensity.  The  passionate  way  of  looking  at 
life,  not  hers  before,  now  makes  her  feelings  lead  her 
where  they  will.  As  she  lightly  dared  temptation 
before  fall,  so  now  she  resolutely  dares  the  whole 
punishment.  "  Let  all  the  sentence  light  on  me  !  " 
Adam's  anger  breaks  down  at  once  under  his  love. 
Then  his  reason  comes  in.  "  Unwary  and  too  desirous, 
as  before  " — to  think  you  could  bear  all  the  punishment 
— ill-able  to  bear  thine  own.  Nor  can  prayers  alter 
decrees  ! — Eve,  led  by  passionate  desire  for  the  rescue 


138  MILTON.  [chap. 

of  the  race  from  the  curse,  rushes  into  extremes.  Let 
us  be  childless — let  us  give  ourselves  death  !  Adam's 
strong  intellect  sees  her  proposals  as  folly,  though  he 
respects  the  feeling  at  their  root. 

The  whole  difference  between  them  is  subtly  marked. 
When  Adam  fell,  his  reason,  though  mastered,  retained 
its  clearness ;  he  yields  to  passion,  but  he  knows  he 
is  acting  irrationally.  But  in  Eve,  passionate  feeling 
now  that  she  has  it,  is  the  reason  of  her  will.  Her 
whole  body  too  alters  under  her  intense  realisation  of 
her  emotion — 

"So  much  of  death  her  thoughts 
Had  entertained  as  dyed  her  cheek  with  pale." 

The  end  is  very  lovely  and  full  of  womanhood.  Once 
Eve  is  reconciled  to  Adam,  she  thinks  that  all  is  well. 
She  forgets  the  sentence  and  returns  to  her  work, 
content.  When  she  is  forgiven  she  forgives  herself, 
and  sees  her  life  as  good.  When  she  hears  that 
she  may  not  remain  in  Paradise,  all  the  woman's 
tender  clinging  to  home  and  the  life  she  loved  breaks 
out  in  her  pathetic  cry.  Adam  feels  the  same  sorrow, 
but  his  reason  sees  the  impossibility  of  staying,  and 
he  turns  to  rest  in  God.  Last,  after  the  Vision — 
the  love  of  both  for  one  another  is  alone  left  for  us 
to  think  of.  Adam  hurries  before  the  angel  to  wake 
his  beloved.  Eve  welcomes  him  as  all  things  under 
heaven  to  her,  yet,  always  more  complex  than  Adam, 
thinks  also  of  motherhood  and  of  the  salvation  of  the 
race  through  her  seed.  It  is  the  last  womanly  touch. 
And  Milton  sends  them  forth  hand  in  hand,  happy  in 
their  love. 

The  Character  of  Milton's  Satan. — He  has 
been  often  said  to  be  the  hero  of  Paradise  Lost  It  is 
enough  to  say,  in  answer,  that  his  history  in  that  book 
is  that  of  a  person  in  process  of  degrading  change. 
Adam,  the  true  hero  of  the  epic,  and  with  him  Eve, 
are  purified  at  the  end.  That  which  they  have  lost 
they  regain  in  another  form — "  a  Paradise  within  thee, 
happier  far."      Over  against  this  purification  is  set  the 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  139 

degradation  of  Satan ;    and    his   real  fall  is  all  the 
greater  for  his  apparent  victory. 

But  at  first  he  is  not  absolutely  evil.  There  was 
an  epic  necessity  that  he  should  be  sublime,  and  that 
we  should  be  interested  in  him,  and  absolute  evil  is 
mean,  and  wakes  no  pleasure.  Therefore  he  is  made 
a  mixed  character,  with  evil  passions  in  which  good 
still  lingers.  And  these  are  held  in  one  who  has 
genius  and  all  its  charm — great  beauty,  great  intel- 
lect, great  emotions,  great  physical  daring;  in  all 
things  proudly  eminent.  The  evil  finally  masters  the 
good,  but  the  good  is  made  vivid  and  attractive  by 
the  darkness  which  surrounds  it.  He  is  the  image  and  ' 
type  of  those  great  and  selfish  conquerors  whose  pride 
it  was  to  draw  the  admiring  world  after  them;  and 
whom  Milton  detested  more  than  any  other  men.  In 
a  number  of  points  the  Satan  of  Milton  resembles  I 
the  Napoleon  of  history. 

At  the  beginning  Satan  is  then  a  mixed  character. 
Before  he  falls,  as  I  maintain  a  second  time  in  his 
destruction  of  innocent  beings,  he  is  selfish,  but  with 
abrupt  touches  of  unselfishness.  He  js  proud,  but 
his  pride  is  for  others  as  well  as  for  himself.  He  is 
full  of  envy  and  malice,  yet  he  often  hates  these 
passions  in  himself.  He  destroys,  but  it  is  with 
difficulty  he  overcomes  his  pity  for  those  he  destroys. 
He  Js  the  great  rebel  against  goodness,  but  he 
persuades  himself  it  is  for  the  sake  of  freedom. 
He  brings_jvar_mto__heaven,  and  despises  heaven, 
yet  he  loves  its  beauty  and  would  fain  thither  return. 
He  is  God's  enemy,  yet  he  allows  God's  justice. 
He  revenges  himself,  yet  revenge  is  bitter.  He  is 
ruthless  in  his  sacrifice  of  his  comrades  to  his  egotism, 
but  he  so  does  it  as  to  win  the  honour  and  retain  the 
love  of  those  he  sacrifices.  He  hates  man,  but  he  loves 
his  friend.  He  hates  God,  buf  "at  first  his  hatred  is 
not  mean ;  it  is  carried  out  with  indomitable  will  and 
courage,  not  to  be  subdued  by  pain.  He  ruins  beauty,  I 
but  he  regrets  its  loss  in  himself  and  admires  it  in 
others.     He  lets  loose  Hell,  and  Sin,  and  Death  on 


11 


140  MILTON.  [chap. 

earth,  but  in  the  doing  of  it  he  is  sorry.  It  is  the 
mixed  human  character  in  which  goodness  is,  but  in 
which  evil  predominates.  It  only  ceases  to  be  human 
at  the  very  end,  when  evil  has  driven  out  all  good. 
It  is  this  humanity  that  makes  him  the  most  interest- 
ing character  in  Paradise  Lost  to  those  who  do  not 
read  the  poem  to  the  close. 

The  Physical  Presentation. — He  is  master  of 
all  the  fallen  angels  in  Power ;  above  them  all  shone 
the  archangel — and  we  admire  the  power,  for  at  first 
it  is  made  use  of  not  only  for  selfish  and  brutal  ends. 
It  is  controlled  by  intellect ;  adapted  to  carry  out 
conceptions  and  to  rescue  his  followers;  bound  up 
with  courage  and  labour  for  others.  The  whole  pas- 
sage in  which  his  flight  over  chaos  is  resolved  on 
and  described  illustrates  this  element  of  good  in  his 
power.  Again,  in  the  garden,  he  claims,  before 
putting  forth  his  might  in  battle  with  Gabriel,  to  have 
used  his  strength  for  the  sake  of  his  people,  and  the 
splendid  picture  of  his  physical  greatness  (iv.  985), 
accords  with  his  thoughts.  It  is  impossible  to  con- 
nect that  sublime  apparition  with  the  foul  image  of 
absolute  evil. 

Yet  the  evil  errand  and  the  evil  in  him  have  already 
lessened  his  might.  Zephon  and  Gabriel  both  tell 
him  that  because  he  is  wicked  he  is  weak.  Lower  and 
lower,  as  the  poem  goes  on,  his  physical  power  sinks, 
in  exact  proportion  to  the  growth  of  evil  in  him. 
When  he  comes  to  use  it,  not  for  others  but  only  for 
destroying  happiness,  it  drops  to  deeper  weakness. 
Milton  marks  the  point.  Satan  fears  Adam  as  possibly 
stronger  than  he — he  who  had  met  archangels.  Satan 
fears  pain — he  who,  so  strong  was  passion,  did  not 
feel  the  burning  marl.     Adam  is — 

"  Foe  not  informidable  !  exempt  from  wound, 
I  not  ;  so  much  hath  Hell  debased,  and  pain 
Enfeebled  me,  to  what  I  was  in  Heaven." 

This  is  the  degradation  of  physical  power. 

The  Degradation  of  Physical  Beauty  also  comes  upon 
him,  and  it  is  the  dying  of  the  remnants  of  good  which 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  141 

steals  away  his  splendour.  Once  that  splendour  was 
only  less  than  archangel  ruined — his  form  had  "  not 
lost  all  her  original  brightness."  Step  by  step  it  falls 
away.  When  he  meets  Uriel  in  the  sun,  he  can  still 
take  the  likeness  of  a  stripling  cherub.  But  even  this 
form  is  ruined  when,  on  Mount  Niphates,  his  borrowed 
face  is  dimmed, 

"  Thrice  changed  with  pale,  ire,  envy  and  despair." 

Later  on,  when  he  meets  in  Paradise  Zephon  and 
Ithuriel  and  asks,  in  pride,  if  they  know  him  not — 
Think  not,  they  answer, 

"  Revolted  spirit,  thy  shape  the  same, 
Or  undiminisht  brightness. 

Thou  resemblest  now 
Thy  sin,  and  place  of  doom  obscure  and  foul." 

And  bitter  is  Satan's  grief.     He  saw  and  pined     | 

"  His  loss  ;  but  chiefly  to  find  here  observed 
His  lustre  visibly  impaired." 

Yet  something  yet  remained ;  Gabriel  sees  him  coming 
— "a  faded  splendour  wan."  It  is  not  till  he  has 
destroyed  innocence  that  all  his  splendour  goes  from 
him.  When  he  enters  hell  on  his  return,  his  shape  is 
still  starbright,  but  the  shining  is  now  "false  glitter," 
and  then — at  the  very  hour  when  he  would  be  most 
glorious — Milton,  to  mark  the  end  of  beauty  which 
has  ceased  to  be  the  expression  of  any  goodness,  since 
it  has  destroyed  goodness,  turns  him  into  the  hideous 
dragon — "a  monstrous  serpent  on  his  belly  prone." 
This  is  the  degradation  of  beauty 

The  Intellectual  Presentation. — He  is  easily 
master  of  the  rest  in  intellect.  The  dash  and  vigour 
with  which  he  answers  Abdiel's  argument  (Book  V.) 
that  submission  is  due  to  God  because  He  is  their 
maker,  is  admirable,  and  Abdiel  does  not  argue  in 
return.  He  denounces  Satan  as  a  blasphemer.  But 
the  blasphemy  is  intellectual,  and  does  not  fall  below 
a  certain  grand  style  of  thought  and  expression. 
Milton  marks  that  it  is  instinct  with  sophistry,  with 


142  MILTON.  [chap. 

counterfeited  truth,  and  the  results  it  produces  in 
Satan  are  fatalism  (855),  and  the  scorn  which  fills 
his  speeches  in  the  battle.  But  at  first  the  addition 
of  evil  to  his  character  quickens  his  intellect  beyond 
that  of  the  good  angels.  It  is,  however,  as  a  tree  is 
quickened  by  a  poisonous  element  added  to  its  soil 
which  forces  its  life,  and  then  hastens  its  decay.  That 
was  Milton's  idea.  He  makes  the  same  thing  take 
place  in  Eve  after  she  has  eaten  of  the  fruit.  Her 
whole  nature  is  stimulated — senses,  appetite,  and 
intellect.  Both  she  and  Adam  feel  "  divinity  within 
them  breeding  wings."  But  the  result  is  only  the  lower 
cunning  of  the  intellect  (Bk.  ix.  810,  &c).  Milton's 
notion  then  is  that  intellectual  power,  at  first  quickened 
by  evil,  degenerates  into  subtlety  and  then  into 
base  cunning.  And  he  works  this  out  in  a  masterly 
way.  In  the  first  great  speeches  of  the  fallen  Arch- 
angel and  in  all  that  leads  to  them ;  in  the  rapidity 
with  which  he  conceives  his  plan,  and  provides  for 
its  acceptance  by  the  council;  in  the  majestic  rhetoric 
and  persuasion  with  which  he  binds  all  round  him, 
Satan's  intellect  is  supreme.  It  confesses  but  despises 
agony.  And  this  intellectual  force,  in  itself  admirable, 
is  kept  so,  because  it  is  used,  as  his  power  was,  for 
the  succour  of  those  he  has  ruined.  But  as  evil 
deepens  in  him  towards  the  ruin  of  man  for  the  sake 
only  of  revenge,  he  loses  breadth  of  intellect.  He  is 
wholly  different  in  the  garden  from  the  great  Intelli- 
gence he  was  in  hell.  The  degradation  is  slow  ;  for  so 
far  good  clings  to  him  that  he  cannot  destroy  without 
regret.  Not  till  he  has  beaten  back  all  the  remnant 
of  noble  thoughts  that  urge  him  to  pity,  and  fully 
resolves  on  using  his  intellect  to  destroy  innocence, 
does  he  feel  the  loss  of  intellect.  When  he  does, 
Milton  again  marks  the  point  clearly.  Satan  is  afraid 
to  tempt  Adam,  lest  he  should  be  too  clear-headed 
for  him.     Behold  alone,  he  says — 

"  The  woman,  opportune  to  all  attempts, 
Her  husband,  for  I  view  far  round,  not  nigh, 
"Whose  higher  intellectual  more  I  shun." 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  143 

This  is  the  degradation  of  intellect,  and  it  is  subtly 
continued  in  the  speech  made  in  hell,  before  Satan  is 
made  into  a  serpent.  Compare  its  boasting,  its  weak 
and  scornful  note  with  the  majesty  of  the  first  speeches. 
The  archangel  mind  is  gone.  Nothing  is  now  left  but 
the  serpent's  cunning. 

The  Moral  Presentation  of  Satan  is  built  on 
the  same  lines,  and  passes  through  similar  changes. 
In  Book  V.  the  root  of  his  evil  is  exposed.  When 
the  Son  of  God  is  made  vicegerent  of  Heaven,  Satan, 
fraught  with  envy,  could  not  bear 

"  Through  pride  that  sight,  and  thought  himself  impaired. 
Deep  malice  thence  conceiving  and  disdain." 

Pride,  out  of  intense  self-desire,  is  that  evil  out  of 
which  Milton  makes  all  other  evils  rise.  "We  are 
eclipsed,"  Satan  says,  we,  "  ordained  to  govern, 
not  to  serve."  And  the  same  fierce  note  of  "  high 
disdain  from  sense  of  injured  merit "  is  struck  at 
once  in  the  first  speech  in  hell  and  in  every  speech 
in  Book  I.  Out  of  it  flow  naturally  "  the  study 
of  revenge,  immortal  hate ; "  the  scorn  of  repentance, 
and  finally  its  impossibility.  Not  once,  through  the 
Poem,  does  Milton.. let  slirj_this  pride.  Whenever 
Satan  is  touched  towards  sorrow,  whenever  he  seems 
near  penitence ;  it  is  this  and  the  shame  of  being 
lower  than  his  own  thought  of  himself,  of  being  faith- 
less to  his  vow  of  vengeance  for  the  slight  he  has 
suffered,  which  recall  him  to  his  evil  work.  It  ends, 
as  he  pursues  the  revenge  it  has  instituted,  by  produ- 
cing, as  means  to  his  revenge,  the^  baser  evils  of  envy, 
and  low  craft,  and  falsehood  and  hatred  of  those  who 
have  not  wronged  him. 

At  first  the  solitary  grandeur  of  his  pride,  needing 
no  help  and  asking  none,  makes  him  for  a  time 
sublime,  lifts  him  above  pain,  above  ruin,  and  gives 
him  a  grave  consolation  in  despair.  All  is  not  lost ; 
the  unconquerable  will  remains  unbroken.  The 
same  disdain  that  made  him  great  to  rebel  makes 
him  great  to  resist  his  fate.  Yet  even  here,  at  his 
10 


144  MILTON.  [chap 

highest    moment,    Milton    marks    the    weakness    in 
this,    by    making   Satan   boast    too    much.       Nor   is 
this  pride  at  first  entirely  evil,  for  it  is  not  for  him- 
self alone.      It   is  a   mixed   egotism.      In    Heaven, 
before  the  war,   it   is   pride    for  his  class,   or  seems 
so ;  indignant  that  the  angels  should  be  under  any 
government   not    chosen   by    themselves,    indignant 
afterwards  that  they  should  serve  man.     And  it  is  not 
only  pride  for  the  honour  of  his  class,  but  pride  in  the 
courage,  faithfulness,  and  glory,  though  withered,  of 
his  followers.     In  the  great  passage,  Bk.   i.   600,  in 
which  he  speaks  of  this,   he  so  far  loses  self  in  his 
emotion  as  to  break  into  tears  ;  made  to  touch  at  that 
moment  the  least  selfish  instant  of  his  life.    With  those 
tears  passed  away  the  last  traces  of  his  archangel  life ; 
and  they  are,  even  to  the  fact  that  the  tears  came  partly 
out  of  the  sensitiveness  of  genius  to  the  excitement  of 
a  vast  crowd  of  followers  moved  with  love,  strangely 
paralleled  by  the  tears  of  the  Emperour  at  Fontaine- 
bleau.       In   this   hour   Satan's   solitude   of  pride   is 
modified   towards    good   by   his    sympathy   with   his 
followers.     But  the  natural  isolation  of  pride  carries 
him   away  from   this    touch  of  good,  and  produces 
scorn ;  and  the  scorn  suffers  the  same  degradation  that 
affects  the  pride. 

Satan's  scorn  in  the  battle  in  Heaven  is  poor,  but 
at  least  it  is  daring.  His  scorn  in  Bk.  i.  is  the  lofty 
scorn  of  pain,  and  of  his  victorious  foe,  and  it  is 
sympathetic  with  his  followers.  His  scorn  in  Bk.  ii. 
has  lost  its  loftiness  and  its  sympathy.  There  is  a 
touch  of  contempt  for  his  people  in  all  he  says. 
He  thinks  them  well  ruined  for  his  sake.  Step  by 
step  the  scorn  loses  its  remnant  of  nobleness,  and 
in  the  last  speech  of  all  it  has  fallen  into  the  mindless 
scoff  of  a  degraded  trickster.  When  Satan  says  he 
has  seduced  man — 

"  And  the  more  to  increase 
Your  wonder,  with  an  apple  ;  he  (God)  thereat 
Offended,  worth  your  laughter,"  &c., 

his  scoff  is  lower  than  himself :  Milton  could  have  made 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  145 

it  as  noble  as  he  liked.  He  made  it,  and  purposely, 
unworthy  of  Satan's  previous  lofty  tone.  His  object 
is  to  mark  at  all  points  the  degradation  of  Satan  after 
he  has  used  his  powers  for  the  destruction  of  innocence. 

Satan's  pride — to  which  I  return — continues  to 
work  within  him,  and  isolates  him  from  his  followers. 
In  Bk.  ii.  he  refuses  service  from  others  lest  service 
should  entail  equality.  "  Whole  in  himself  and  owed  to 
none,"  he  goes  upon  his  journey  :  it  is  a  step  down- 
wards from  the  pride  which  could  weep  for  sympathy. 
But  the  degradation  is  again  slowly  wrought.  When 
he  is  alone  and  none  can  see  his  sorrow,  his  pride 
breaks  down  again  and  again,  and  as  often  reasserts 
itself. 

The  struggle  in  which  he  becomes  wholly  evil  goes 
through  several  phases.  The  first  is  on  Mount  Niphates. 
The  excitement  of  the  scenes  in  Hell  is  over.  The  look 
he  fixes  on  the  sun  is  "sad  and  grieved."  His  speech/ 
begins  in  sighs.  It  is  the  image  of  one  in  whom  pride/ 
for  the  moment  has  given  way  to  the  consciousness'- 
of  misery  and  of  hell  within  :  in_.whom  there  is  some 
good.  Conscience  is  alive,  but  it  wakes  despair  ;  and 
he  bursts  out,  like  Prometheus,  racked  too  like  him, 
in  an  address  to  the  sun.  The  bright  Light  recalls 
to  him  his  ancient  brightness,  and  for  that  he  hates  it. 
Yet  there  is  softness  in  his  hate ;  it  is  the  hate  of 
tears.  Self-pity  thrills  him  through.  And  in  the 
softening  he  thinks  of  God,  and  for  a  moment  breaks 
into  penitence — a  strange  touch  in  Milton's  conception 
of  Satan  which  is  repeated  in  Paradise  Regained : — 

Till  pride  and  worse  ambition  threw  me  down, 

Warring  in  Heaven  against  Heaven's  matchless  King  : 

Ah,  wherefore  ?     He  deserved  no  such  return 

From  me,  whom  he  created  what  I  was 

In  that  bright  eminence,  and  with  his  good 

Upbraided  none  ;  nor  was  his  service  hard." — Bk.  iv.  40. 

He  goes  on — it  is  his  confession — saying  that  all  God's    , 
goodness  wrought  malice  in  him,  because  he  disdained 
subjection,  because   the  weight  of  gratitude  hurt  his 
pride.     Had  he  been  an  inferior  angel,  he  had  been 


/ 


146  MILTON.  [chap. 

now  happy,  since  without  ambition.  Yet,  no !  he 
had  free  will  to  fall  or  not,  and  in  any  state — such 
was  his  temper — he  had  fallen.  Therefore  he  has 
nothing  to  accuse  but  Heaven's  free  love  dealt  equally 
to  all — "  Be  then  God's  love  accurst ! " — a  fine,  fierce 
turn  of  his  despair  and  hate.  And  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  this  awful  temper  of  mind  in  him  which  makes 
him  curse  love,  overthrows  his  self-control;  and 
the  depth  of  his  wretchedness  is  unveiled  : — 

I  "  Me  miserable  !  which  way  shall  I  fly 
Infinite  wrath  and  infinite  despair  ?  "  &c. 

The  passion  of  this  sorrow  leads  him  to  ask  if  he  can 
repent.  Then  his  pride  comes  back.  No — he  thinks, 
disdain  forbids  repentance,  dread  of  shame  among  the 
spirits  beneath,  who  little  know — and  here  again  pride 
in  its  lonely  hour  yields  to  pain — under  what  torments 
he  groans,  how  dearly  he  abides  his  boasting  !  Yet 
were  he  to  repent — (and  it  is  wise  of  Milton  to  make 
Satan  know  himself  so  well ;  the  deceiver  is  not  self- 
deceived) — he  could  not  remain  submissive.  He  would 
be  filled  again  with  disdain,  and  now  "wounds  of 
deadly  hate  have  pierced  too  deep."  It  may  not  be  ; 
God  knows  him  as  he  knows  himself.  God  would  not 
grant  a  useless  peace,  neither  can  he  beg  it — 

"  So  farewell  hope,  and,  with  hope,  farewell  fear, 
Farewell  remorse  :  All  good  to  me  is  lost ; 
Evil,  be  thou  my  good  :  by  thee  at  least 
Divided  empire  with  Heaven's  King  I  hold." 

This  is  the  first  struggle  of  the  remnants  of  good  with 
self-degrading  pride. 

The  next  is  when  he  sees  Adam  and  Eve  (Bk. _iv. 
358).  Envy  seizes  him,  but  the  old  heavenly  delight 
in  beauty  and  goodness  glides  into  his  soul.  He 
wonders  at  their  loveliness  j  he  could  love  them, 
so  lively  shines  in  them  divine  resemblance.  Pity 
follows  the  passing  breath  of  love  : — 

"  Ah  gentle  pair,  ye  little  think  how  nigh 

/     Your  change  approaches 

To  you  whom  I  could  pity  thus  forlorn, 
Though  I  unpitied." 


iv.]  PARADISE  LOST.  147 

But  his  resolution  holds  firm  ;  and  the  touch  of  heaven 
only  serves  to  give  the  irony  with  which  he  opens 
Hell  to  them  a  subtle  note  of  regret  and  pathos. 
The  emotion  in  his  irony  influences  him  through  his 
sensitive  nature  (and  at  first  Satan  is  represented  as 
highly  strung  to  all  fine  things  and  answering  in- 
stantly to  them),  and  his  pity  rises  again.  He  is 
loth  to  this  revenge,  yet  public  reason  compels  him — 
It  is  not  public  reason :  it  is  his  own  pride  that  drives 
him  to  action,  and  with  it  also 

"  Honour  and  empire  with  revenge  enlarged." 

Milton  marks  the  conscious  self-deceit.  Satan's  public 
reason  is  that  necessity  which  is  "  the  tyrant's  plea." 
This  is  the  second  struggle  ;  and  its  evil  result  is 
shown  at  line  505,  where  all  pity  is  gone  and  only 
envy  left. 

If  anything  were  wanting  to  confirm  his  resolve,  it  is 
now  given  by  Milton  when  Satan  is  discovered  and  led 
before  Gabriel  and  all  the  old  wounds  are  re-opened. 
The  scene  is  filled  throughout  with  touches  which 
insist  on  pride.  "Not  to  know  me  argues  yourselves 
unknown  "  has  almost  passed  into  a  proverb  of  pride : 
he  goes  like  a  proud  steed  reined  ;  defiance  lowers  in 
his  look  ;  his  scorn  is  still  sublime ;  the  very  bitterness 
of  pride  is  in  his  cry  "  Insulting  angel ;  "  its  isola- 
tion in 

"  I  therefore,  I  alone  first  undertook 
To  wing  the  desolate  abyss  ; " 

its  boasting  in  his  scorn  of  "cringing  "  angels. 

Gabriel's  answer  looks  forward  to  that  which  pride 
was  sure  to  make  Satan  in  the  end.  He  is  in  the 
archangel's  eyes  the  sly  hypocrite.  Gabriel  dwells  on 
hypocrisy,  and  it  is  a  subtle  thought,  as  being,  even  in 
Heaven,  the  result  of  pride — 

"  Who  more  than  thou 
Once  fawned,  and  cringed,  and  servilely  adored  ?  " 

And  the  speech  makes  us  see  plainly  that  those  who 
strangely  claim  Satan  as  the  representative  of  demo- 


i48  MILTON.  [chap. 

cratic  liberty  are  wholly  mistaken  :  for  Milton  marks 
another  point  in  Satan  considered  as  the  representative 
tyrant,  that  "  he  would  see?n  the  patron  of  liberty." 

Seven  nights  pass  by  between  this  and  Satan's  next 
appearance.  Out  of  the  lonely  brooding  of  their 
darkness  he  comes  back  to  Paradise,  resolved  to 
destroy.  The  third  phase  of  his  struggle  has  come, 
but  it  is  scarcely  now  a  struggle.  He  sees  the  earth 
and  all  its  beauty — Bk.  ix.  ioo — and  thinks  with 
what  delight  he  would  have  walked  it  round;  but 
beauty  does  not  soften  him  as  before,  it  torments  him 
by  contrast  with  the  inward  pain  he  suffers,  "  as  from 
the  hateful  siege  of  contraries."  Good  hurts  him  now. 
"  Only  in  destroying  he  finds  ease "  to  his  relentless 
thoughts.  The  phrase  marks  his  passage  into  com- 
plete evil.  Envy  of  man,  and  disdain,  injured  by  man, 
deepen,  and  deepen  to  greater  baseness  ;  and  when 
he  enters  the  serpent,  the  passage  (163 — 178)  in  which 
he  describes  his  own  "  foul  descent,"  that  he  who  con- 
tended with  God  should  "  imbrute  his  essence  mixed 
with  bestial  slime;"  in  which  he  confesses  that 
ambition  and  revenge  descend  to  basest  things ;  in 
which  the  recklessness  of  pure  spite  rescues  him 
from  the  shame  of  this  touch  of  self-knowledge — is 
Milton's  summing  up  of  Satan's  moral  degradation. 

One  last  flicker  of  the  lamp  of  goodness  flares  up 
in  him,  and  then  dies,  when  he  is — Bk.  ix.  460-79 
— surprised  out  of  his  evil  thoughts  by  the  beauty  of 
Eve — 

"  Stupidly  good,  of  enmity  disarmed, 
Of  guile,  of  hate,  of  envy,  of  revenge." 

But  the  "  hot  hell  within  him "  soon  consumes  his 
delight,  and  Milton  makes  emphatic  the  reason  why 
Satan  lost  the  remnants  of  goodness  by  repeating  the 
phrase — 

"  Save  what  is  in  destroying,  other  joy 
To  me  is  lost." 

That  is  his  ruin.  He  loses  all  good  in  destroying 
good  that  has  not  wronged  him.     It  is  his  second  fall, 


iv.]  PARADISE  REGAINED  i49 

his  complete  moral  degradation.  The  speech  in  Hell 
and  the  monstrous  change  that  follows  mark  this  as 
they  marked  the  others.  There  is  not  a  trace  of  high 
thinking  or  moral  feeling  left. 

The  Satan  of  Paradise  Regai?ied  is  not  the  same 
being.  He  is  reconceived  for  the  occasion.  He  is 
the  liar,  the  hypocrite,  the  gray  dissimulator,  weak  in 
power,  intellectual  still,  but  having  only  the  intellect 
of  the  sophist  and  the  rhetorician,  moved  easily 
to  ill-temper,  all  his  loftiness  gone,  a  beaten  foe  from 
the  beginning.  Only  in  one  strange  passage  is  there 
a  recollection  of  the  great  figure  and  spirit  of  Paradise 
Lost.  It  is  where  penitence  comes  upon  him  for  an 
instant,  where  the  soul-subduing  power  of  Christ's 
gentleness  affects  him  ;  a  brief  moment,  for  he  recovers 
instantly,  unable  to  free  himself  from  himself.  But 
in  it  we  hear  the  old  music  and  the  old  thoughts,  and 
touch  the  old  character  we  know  so  well  in  the  great 
epic.  This  curious  passage  is  well  worth  study — 
Book  III.  203 — 222. 

Paradise  Regained,  with  Samson  Agonistes, 

was  published  by  John  Starkey  at  the  Mitre  in  Fleet 
Street,  167 1.  It  was  licensed  in  July,  1670;  entered 
on  the  books  of  the  Stationers'  Company  in  Sep- 
tember, 1670  ;  and  the  second  edition  of  it  appeared 
in  1680.  Its  origin  is  to  be  found  in  a  pretty  story  told 
by  Ellwood  the  Quaker.  Visiting  Milton  in  1665  at 
Chalfont,  the  poet  put  into  his  hands  the  MS.  of 
Paradise  Lost.  On  returning  it,  "  he  asked  me  how 
I  liked  it  and  what  I  thought  of  it,  which  I  modestly 
but  freely  told  him  ;  and  after  some  further  discourse 
about  it,  I  pleasantly  said  to  him,  '  Thou  hast  said 
much  here  of  Paradise  lost,  but  what  hast  thou  to 
say  of  Paradise  found?'  He  made  me  no  answer, 
but  sate  for  some  time  in  a  muse,  then  brake  off  that 
discourse  and  fell  into  another  subject."  When  the 
Plague  was  over,  Milton  came  back  to  London,  and 
Ellwood  calling  on  him,  "  He  showed  me,"  he  says, 
"  his  second  poem,  called  Paradise  Regained,  and  in 


150  MILTON.  [chap. 

a  pleasant  tone  said  to  me,  '  This  is  owing  to  you,  for 
you  put  it  into  my  head  by  the  question  you  put  to 
me  at  Chalfont,  which  before  I  had  not  thought 
of.' " 

We  know,  then,  from  this  that  the  poem  was  finished 
in  1666,  before  the  publication  of  Paradise  Lost,  and 
that  it  remained  four  years  in  manuscript.  Unlike 
Paradise  Lost,  which  lay  simmering  in  Milton's  mind 
for  nearly  thirty  years,  Paradise  Regained  was  the 
swift  conception  and  birth  of  a  year.  There  is  no 
trace  of  it  in  the  subjects  jotted  down  in  earlier  days. 
It  bears  the  marks  of  haste  ;  but  we  may  say  that  it 
is  contained  in  Paradise  Lost.  It  is,  in  fact,  the 
sequel  of  that  poem — rather  a  codicil  than  a  sequel. 
The  subject  of  the  great  epic  was  the  disobedience 
of  man  in  temptation,  and  the  consequent  loss  of 
Paradise  to  all  mankind.  The  subject  of  Paradise 
Regained  is  the  reversal  of  this — the  obedience  of 
man  in  temptation,  and  the  recovery  thereby  of 
Paradise  to  all  mankind.  Many  useless  pages  have 
been  written  on  the  strangeness  of  applying  the  title 
to  the  one  event  of  the  temptation  and  victory  of 
Christ.  The  reason  lies  on  the  face  of  the  thing.  It 
suited  Milton  as  a  poet  to  contrast  temptation  with 
temptation.  The  moment  he  heard  the  phrase 
Paradise  Found,  the  subject  in  its  form  leaped  to 
its  feet  before  his  inward  eye.  He  liked  his  work 
himself;  but  the  only  origin  for  the  common  belief 
that  he  preferred  it  to  Paradise  Lost  is  the  passage 
in  Phillips'  life : — "  It  is  generally  censured  to  be 
much  inferior  to  the  other,  though  he  (Milton)  could 
not  hear  with  patience  any  such  thing  when  related 
to  him  " — words  which  may  simply  mean  that  Milton 
was  wearied  by  his  critics. 

The  poem  shares  in  the  epic  character  and  dignity 
of  Paradise  Lost.  Both  are  reflected  on  it  from  its 
predecessor.  The  shghtness  and  inequality  (almost 
half  of  the  book  is  given  to  one  temptation)  of  the 
treatment  of  the  subject,  the  want  of  care  which  we 
feel  in  many  parts,  the  frequent  pedestrianism  of  the 


TV.]  PARADISE  REGAINED.  151 

style,  the  maimed  movement  of  some  of  the  verses, 
the  heavy  and  occasionally  inadequate  reasoning,  the 
picture  of  Satan  and  Christ  attacking  one  another  like 
two  disputants  in  the  schools,  lessen  the  dignity  of 
the  poem.  But  still  the  grand  style,  and  the  grandeur 
of  Milton's  character  passing  like  a  force  through  the 
arguments,  make  the  poem  dignified  ;  and  its  large 
movement  over  the  classical  themes  of  Rome  and 
Athens,  and  over  great  moral  questions ;  and  the 
noble  way  in  which  Nature  is  brought  in  to  enhance, 
contrast,  or  illustrate  the  story  and  its  thoughts — 
secure  its  dignity.  A  few  gentle  and  homely  pictures, 
with  more  of  the  charm  of  common  earth  than  any 
in  Paradise  Lost,  touch  it  with  tenderness.  Its  note 
is  not  the  note  of  Paradise  Lost,  which  is  Fall ;  it  is 
the  note  of  victory,  but  the  too  argumentative  treat- 
ment robs  it  of  the  triumphant  spirit  which  Milton 
desired  to  give  it.  At  its  root  its  subject  is  the  same 
as  that  of  Paradise  Lost.  It  is  the  "great  duel" 
between  good  in  man  and  evil  without  him — that 
recurring,  attractive  subject  which  underlies  almost  all 
national  epics  and  all  great  tragedy,  which  no  poet 
of  humanity  has  ever  been  able  to  avoid,  and  which, 
treated  in  different  ways  by  Milton  in  Comus  and 
Samson  Agonistes  and  Paradise  Lost  and  Regained, 
ought  to  be  enough  to  free  him  from  the  charge  of 
being  wanting  in  "  humanism,"  if  his  intense  and  domi- 
nating individuality  is  not  enough  to  do  so.  The 
error  of  the  poem  is  not  in  the  sameness  of  the 
subject,  but  in  the  treatment  of  the  same  subject 
a  second  time  on  the  same  lines.  That  he  succeeds 
at  all  in  the  poem  manifests  his  power;  that  he 
fails  in  the  invention,  energy,  brightness,  and  beauty 
of  Paradise  Lost,  and  that  the  movement  is  heavier 
and  more  retarded,  is  only  to  be  expected.  The  very 
verse  shares  in  the  inevitable  languor  of  a  man  doing 
a  second  time  the  thing  he  has  already  done  with  his 
full  force.  We  ask,  and  ask  more  than  once,  Where 
is  the  ear  that  heard  and  composed  the  harmonies  of 
Paradise  Lost  ? 


r^  MILTON.  [chap. 

Book  I. — It  begins  with  a  proem  like  one  of  the 
old  mysteries.  There  are  three  pictures  :  of  the  Baptist 
and  Christ  at  the  Jordan  ;  of  Satan  holding  his  gloomy 
consistory  in  mid  air  and  of  his  going  forth  to  tempt 
Christ ;  of  the  Father  in  Heaven  speaking  to  Gabriel 
of  the  Son's  victory  over  Satan.  Milton,  in  his  manner, 
thus  fills  his  theatre  with  expectant  witnesses,  all 
concentrating  their  interest  on  the  great  duel  now  at 
hand. 

The  main  story  is  well  introduced  by  the  wandering 
away  of  Christ,  lost  in  thought : 

"  Thought  following  thought,  and  step  by  step  led  on," 

into  the  desert.  The  long  self-conscious  soliloquy  of 
Christ,  in  which  he  tells  the  story  of  his  past  life, 
strikes  a  false  note ;  and  is  unnatural  in  one  whose 
eyes  were  on  the  present  and  the  future.  The  picture 
of  the  Saviour  in  the  wilderness ;  the  sudden  intro- 
duction of  Satan,  as  an  aged  peasant,  to  illustrate  his 
gray  dissimulation ;  and  the  swift  outbreak  of  the  Fiend 
into  his  true  character,  as  if  here  also  touched  with 
Ithuriel's  spear,  are  all  finely  wrought.  The  first 
temptation  is  then  offered  to  Christ,  but  treated  so 
lightly  that  we  see  that  Milton  had  no  idea  of  its 
meaning.  The  conversation  which  follows,  being 
founded  on  no  clear  view  of  the  situation,  is  heavy, 
and  loses  the  solemnity  of  the  hour  and  the  personages 
in  its  scolding  tone  on  one  side,  and  its  smooth  and 
abject  flattery  on  the  other. 

Book  II.  opens  with  a  homely  picture  of  the  dis- 
ciples of  Christ,  "close  in  a  cottage/'  praying  for  his 
return;  and  with  another,  touched  with  tender  mother- 
hood, of  Mary  awaiting  it ;  and  with  a  third  of  Satan 
again  in  council  with  his  peers  (as  in  the  second  book  of 
Paradise  Lost,  but  how  different  in  power  !),  in  which 
Belial  advises  to  "  set  woman  in  his  eye  and  in  his 
walk,"  and  Satan  answers  in  a  passage,  full  of  Milton's 
classic  memories,  and  therefore  full  of  poetry.  All 
the  three  pictures  are  used  to  carry  the  mind  forward 
to  the  lonely  figure  of  Christ  in  the  wilderness  and 


IV.]  PARADISE   REGAINED.  153 

to  increase  the  importance  of  the  coming  action. 
Immediately  we  find  ourselves  with  Christ  hungering 
as  the  night  falls.  The  dreams,  happily  suggested  by 
his  hunger,  his  waking,  the  description  of  the  fresh 
morning  and  the  birds  and  the  hill  top  and  the  pleasant 
grove  beneath,  are  pure  and  lovely  poetry.  It  is  delight- 
ful to  come  upon  the  passage.  It  is  in  this  grove  that 
Milton  doubles  the  first  temptation  by  making  Satan 
set  before  Christ  tables  piled  with  rich  foods  and  wines 
and  attended  by  nymphs  ;  a  picture  which  only  his 
style  saves,  if  it  does  save  it,  from  theatrical  vulgarity. 
It  is  a  mistake  in  art,  because  it  tries  to  say  in  a  more 
ornate  manner  what  has  been  said  before  in  a  simple 
manner,  and  it  involves  an  inconsistency.  Satan  has 
told  Belial  that  Christ  must  be  tempted  by  manlier 
objects  that  have  a  show  of  worth,  and  satisfy  only 
the  lawful  desires  of  nature.  But  now,  in  the  teeth 
of  his  opinion,  he  sets  before  Christ  all  the  dainties 
of  the  world,  tempting  him  beyond  the  lawful  desires 
of  nature.  But  the  truth  is  Milton  not  having  formed 
a  clear  idea  of  the  temptation,  tried  to  get  one  by 
repeating  himself,  and  the  Nemesis  of  unintelligent 
repetition  fell  upon  him.  Christ's  answer — I  have  a 
right  to  all  things,  I  will  not  take  your  gifts — has  no 
meaning,  unless  that  Christ  wished  to  say  that  the 
gratification  of  appetite  was  nothing  to  him.  But  that 
has  been  said  before  in  the  First  Book,  and  Satan 
himself  had  said  it.  In  fact,  this  new  picture,  how- 
ever poetically  worked  out,  lowers  the  whole  idea  of 
the  subject ;  makes  the  subtilty  of  the  Devil  common- 
place, and  so  weakens  the  temptation  ;  and  degrades 
the  lofty  image  which  Milton  wishes  to  give  of  the 
Saviour. 

The  second  temptation,  that  on  the  mountain,  now 
begins  at  the  end  of  Book  II.  406.  It  was  that  Christ 
should  win  his  kingdom  by  worship  of  the  Devil, 
that  is,  by  using  evil  means  in  order  to  attain  it. 
Milton  understands  this,  and  his  success  in  this  part 
of  the  poem  is  owing  to  his  clear  conception  of  his 
subject.     For,  when  a  poet  possesses  that,  he  works 


154  MILTON.  [chap. 

with  unconscious  Tightness ;  when  he  does  not,  his  work 
will  be  wrong  in  treatment,  in  ornament,  in  everything, 
and  the  more  he  attempts  to  finish  it,  the  more  wrong 
it  will  become.  Here,  the  conception  is  right,  and 
carries  everything  with  it.  The  conversation  is  easy, 
the  treatment  is  noble,  it  grows  and  swells  to  a  climax, 
the  transitions  are  well  managed,  the  ornament  is 
fitting,  and  the  natural  scenery  adds  force  to  the 
thoughts  and  to  the  conclusion.  The  subject  Milton 
had  to  treat  was  in  itself  noble — wealth,  honour, 
arms,  arts,  and  their  kingdoms,  set  over  against  the 
kingdom  of  Christ. 

It  begins  before  Satan,  in  the  next  book,  brings 
Christ  to  the  "specular  mount."  High  designs,  high 
actions  are  your  aim,  the  Tempter  says,  and  for  these 
riches  are  needful. 

"  Riches  are  mine,  fortune  is  in  my  hand  ; 
They  whom  I  favour  thrive  in  wealth  amain, 
While  virtue,  valour,  wisdom,  sit  in  want." 

The  answer  is  well  worth  reading  for  its  high  and 
grave  morality,  for  its  fine  passage  on  riches,  "  the 
toil  of  fools,  the  wise  man's  cumbrance,"  for  the  poli- 
tical allusions  to  the  kingship  then  in  England,  and 
for  the  old  Miltonic  strain  of  Temperance  in  it,  such 
as  we  have  listened  to  in  Covins. 

Book  III.  opens  with  the  temptation  of  Fame. 
"  So  wise  in  counsel  for  wisdom,  in  skill  of  conduct 
in  war,  why  deprive  thyself  of  glory  ?  "  The  answer 
is  full  of  interest.  The  lines  at  50-60,  do  not  say 
much  for  Milton's  republican  views.  They  have  the 
same  half-contempt  that  Shakspere  had  for  the  mob, 
and  they  sound  strange  in  the  mouth  of  Christ.  The 
definition  of  true  glory  is  the  same  as  that  in  Lycidas. 
The  scorn  and  wrath  of  Milton  fill  the  lines  which 
paint  the  conquerors  who  left  ruin  behind  them,  and 
were  called  Gods :  and  we  cannot  but  feel  that  it 
is  himself,  the  grave  and  stern  republican,  to  whom  we 
listen.  Nor  less  do  we  hear  him  in  the  episode  of 
thought  that  follows  when  Satan,  saying,  "  Think  not 


rv.]  PARADISE  REGAINED.  155 

so  slight  of  glory ;  therein  least  resembling  thy  great 
Father,"  is  answered  by  Christ,  not  out  of  Puritanic 
theology,  but  out  of  the  heart  of  the  poet,  that  God 
exacts  glory  from  men — 

"  Not  for  glory  as  prime  end, 
But  to  show  forth  his  goodness,  and  impart 
His  good  communicable  to  every  soul 
Freely." 

The  next  appeal  is  direct  to  Christ's  kingdom.  u  Israel 
is  enslaved,  zeal  for  thy  Father's  house,  duty  to  free 
thy  country  urge  thee  on.  Verify  the  prophets."  The 
answer  runs  on  principles  that  filled  the  whole  of 
Milton's  life.  "All  things  are  best  fulfilled  in  their 
due  time."  "  Who  best  can  suffer,  best  can  do,  best 
reign,  who  first  well  hath  obeyed."  At  the  end  comes 
that  strange  passage  elsewhere  noted  in  which  Satan 
would  fain  hide  in  the  kindness  of  Christ.  But  the 
Tempter  soon  changing,  passes  by  an  easy  transition 
to  a  further  trial,  and  now  brings  Christ  to  the  specular 
mount.  The  landscape  is  very  largely  and  nobly  set 
forth,  and  all  Assyria  is  described ;  and  in  splendid 
verse  the  march  and  armament  of  the  Parthian  host. 
All  Milton  is  back  again  with  us  in  a  line  like  this, 
"  Chariots,  or  elephants  endorst  with  towers." 

"  Jewry  lies  between  Rome  and  Parthia :  one  or  other 
thou  must  choose  for  ally,  wouldst  thou  hold  thy 
kingdom.     Choose  Parthia,  I  will  gain  it  for  thee." 

Book  IV. — Rejected,  Satan  now  returns  to  the 
same  temptation  in  another  form.  He  shows  the 
Saviour  Rome;  tells  him  of  the  monster  Tiberius, 
how  easy  to  expel  him  ;  "  Aim  therefore  at  no  less 
than  all  the  world — then  David's  throne  is  thine." 
The  description  of  "great  and  glorious  Rome,  queen 
of  the  earth,"  has  in  its  verse  alone  a  majesty  worthy 
of  the  city ;  and  so  vivid  is  it  that  we  almost  behold 
Rome  restored  in  it,  and  the  conflux  at  her  gates, 
nay,  all  the  world  gathered  round  her.  In  a  long 
succession  of  verses,  name  after  name  of  peoples,  seas, 
and  isles  strike  upon   our   ear,  until   in   the   magic 


156  MILTON.  [chap. 

mirror  of  the  poet  we  see  all  nations,  near  and  far, 
bringing  their  homage  and  their  wealth  along  the 
Roman  roads  to  the  centre  of  the  world.  Christ  answers 
by  arraigning  the  luxury  of  Rome  j  by  mocking,  with 
perhaps  a  touch  of  scorn  from  Milton  when  he  thought 
of  the  embassies  that  congratulated  the  Restoration, 
at  the  hollow  lies  of  ambassadors;  by  tossing  one 
scornful  line  at  Tiberius — 

"  Let  his  tormentor,  Conscience,  find  him  out ;  " 

and  by  a  burst  of  eloquent  wrath  into  which  suddenly 
rushes  Milton's  republicanism,  144-153.  Then  the 
tempter,  baffled  and  wrought  to  rage — and  the  way  in 
which  the  anger  of  failure  makes  him  throw  down  the 
mask,  is  one  of  the  finest  things  in  the  book — turns  on 
Christ  and  says — "  All  this  is  mine,  thou  shalt  have 
it,  if  thou  wilt  worship  me."  He  is  answered  in  the 
words  of  Scripture.  The  proposal  and  the  answer  are 
not  well  brought  in.  They  are  made  an  incident 
only  in  the  temptation,  when  they  are  the  idea  of  the 
whole. 

It  is  with  great  skill  that  Satan  recovers  himself, 
195-210.  Then  he  renews  his  work — Let  pass  then 
the  kingdoms  of  the  world.  But  there  is  another 
kingdom,  the  kingdom  of  the  mind.  Be  famous  then 
by  wisdom  :  you  will  need  the  arts ;  and  he  shows  the 
Saviour  Athens.  This  is  one  of  the  noblest  descrip- 
tions in  Milton,  beautiful  in  solemn  rhythm ;  as  weighty 
with  thought,  as  grand  in  style,  as  it  is  vivid  in  its 
painting ;  too  slow  in  movement  here  and  there  to  be 
called  Greek,  but  steeped  in  love  of  Greece ;  having 
through  it  some  of  the  subtle  semi-paganism  of  the 
Renaissance  and  its  sweetness  and  grace,  but  subdued 
by  the  Hebrew  element  of  Milton's  Puritanism.  I  know 
no  passage  in  which  all  these  elements  appear  more 
clearly,  though  they  are  mingled  and  run  in  and  out  of 
one  another  like  colours  in  an  oriental  web.  The  style 
changes  to  a  grave,  somewhat  unrhythmical  one,  in  the 
answer  of  Christ  to  Satan.  All  ornament  is  gone,  and 
it  is  the  stern  Puritanism  of  Milton  that  speaks,  that 


iv.J  PARADISE  REGAINED.  157 

sterner  form  of  it  which  condemned  all  amusement  and 
set  aside  all  literature  but  the  Bible.  It  is  strange  to 
step  out  of  the  enchanted  verse  of  the  Renaissance 
into  the  unadorned  virtue  of  the  Puritan  ;  but  it  is  con- 
trasts of  this  kind  which  give  half  their  interest,  apart 
from  poetry,  to  the  work  and  life  of  Milton.  The 
heart  of  the  firmest  and  best  Puritanism  is  expressed 
in  the  lines  286-290.  The  rest  is  an  attack  on  Greek 
philosophy.  It  is  curious  to  find  the  youth  who 
honoured  Plato  saying  in  old  age — "The  next  to 
fabling  fell  and  smooth  conceits."  It  is  bolder  still 
to  say  that  all  Greek  philosophy  was  little  else  than 
dreams,  and  that  Hebrew  poetry  is  higher  than  the 
Greek.  But  Milton  put  only  one  side  of  his  mind 
into  the  mouth  of  Christ ;  the  other  side  we  have  had 
already  in  the  mouth  of  Satan. 

The  answer  confounds  the  Tempter,  who  in  his 
baffled  wrath  asks — Since  wealth  and  glory,  and  the 
empire  of  the  world,  and  arms  and  arts  delight  thee 
not,  what  dost  thou  in  the  world  ?  the  wilderness  for 
thee  is  fittest  place.  I  found  thee  there,  and  thither 
will  return  thee.  Then  comes  that  noble  passage 
where  all  that  is  sublime  in  storm  is  followed  by  all 
that  is  soft  in  morning  peace,  in  one  of  those  strong 
contrasts  that  Milton  loved  to  make,  410-438.  It  is 
Milton's  fine  poetic  way  of  putting  the  result  of  the 
whole  temptation  into  the  mouth  of  Nature.  The 
storm  is  the  rage  of  force  and  subtle  intellect — the 
kingly  powers  which  Christ  rejected — against  him ;  the 
morning  and  its  peace  is  the  image  of  his  victory,  and 
of  the  gentle  love  wherewith  he  gained  it. 

The  tempest  is  then  made  the  ground  of  another 
trial,  the  trial  of  fear  of  ill.  "  The  storm  presages 
thy  fate,  let  it  warn  thee  " — a  warning  sternly  thrown 
back  by  Christ.  The  last  temptation  is  then  finely 
introduced.  It  seems  to  be  suddenly  conceived  by 
Satan,  who  doubts  whether  Christ  be  the  Son  of 
God — I  am  also  God's  son,  all  men  are  ;  thou  more 
perhaps,  but  that  I  will  now  prove — and  he  places 
Christ  on  the  highest  pinnacle  of  the  temple. 


158  MILTON.  [chap. 

"  Now  show  thy  progeny;  if  not  to  stand, 
Cast  thyself  down ;  safely  if  Son  of  God." 

And  Christ 

"  Tempt  not  the  Lord  thy  God.     He  said,  and  stood  ; 
But  Satan,  smitten  with  amazement,  fell." 

This  is  cleverly  put,  but  it  is  theatrical.  As  in  the 
case  of  the  first  temptation,  so  here  Milton  is  driven 
into  sensationalism  because  he  did  not  understand 
his  subject.  The  additions  he  makes  to  the  story 
in  the  Gospel  violate  the  meaning  of  the  story.  Even 
with  the  additions,  he  could  find  no  ideas  on  which 
his  imagination  could  truly  employ  itself  in  this 
temptation,  and  he  only  glances  over  it.  He  gives 
it  thirty  lines.  He  gives  900  lines  to  the  second, 
the  idea  of  which  he  did  understand.  The  fulness 
with  which  the  one,  and  the  slightness  with  which  the 
other  is  treated  is  a  curious  instance  of  the  difference 
which  a  clear  or  a  vague  conception  of  a  subject 
makes  in  the  work  of  a  poet. 

The  end  has  now  come — angels  bear  the  Saviour 
away  and  feed  him  from  the  Tree  of  Life.  They  sing 
the  triumph  of  Paradise  Regained,  and  Christ 

"  Home  to  his  mother's  house  private  returned." 

Samson  Agonistes  (the  wrestler),  written,  it  is 
most  likely,  after  1667,  was  published  in  1671.  In 
the  MS.  notes  of  1640  there  are  many  subjects  drawn 
from  the  life  of  Samson — Samson  Pursophorus  or 
Hybristes  or  Samson  Marrying  or  Pamath-Lechi, 
and  lastly  Dagonalia.  A  Preface  was  put  to  the 
Agonistes,  in  which  Milton,  knowing  that  his  party 
abhorred  the  stage,  apologises  for  his  use  of  the 
dramatic  form  by  dwelling  on  the  nobleness  of 
Tragedy  among  the  Greeks,  and  distinguishes  his 
drama  from  the  stage  plays  of  the  day.  The  Ago- 
nistes is  built  then  on  the  Greek  model,  and  is  more 
in  the  manner  of  Euripides  than  of  Sophocles.  It 
has    the   didactiveness   of    Euripides,  and    his   long 


rv.J  SAMSON  AGONISTES.  159 

movement,  and  his  want  of  dramatic  talk  and  play 
— the  dialogues  are  debates — and  his  want  of  vivid 
characterisation.  It  has  less  of  tearful  human  pathos 
than  Euripides  had,  but  it  has  more  of  heroic  pathos. 

Milton  returns  then,  in  this  piece,  to  his  early  pre- 
ference for  the  dramatic  form.  But  the  whole  temper 
of  his  genius  was  now  changed.  The  difference 
between  the  Counts  and  Samson  is  all  the  difference 
between  youth  and  age ;  between  a  young  man's 
ideal  philosophy  and  a  grown  man's  knowledge  of  the 
world ;  between  the  writing  of  one  who  foresaw, 
and  one  who  looked  back  on,  a  great  political  and 
religious  struggle  in  which  his  world  was  changed ; 
between  the  spirit  of  the  Renaissance,  mixed  with 
the  spirit  of  Puritanism,  and  a  Puritanism,  the  form 
of  which  alone  was  Greek.  Virtue,  in  Comus,  is  a 
young  girl,  the  Lady  of  the  Church  of  England ; 
it  may  be  the  Lady  of  Purity  in  Milton's  own  soul, 
whom,  after  a  struggle,  eternal  Righteousness  would 
deliver.  Virtue,  in  Samson,  is  a  fallen,  but  repentant 
man,  who  rests  on  Divine  strength  and  wins  the 
victory — the  Puritanism  which  now  in  England  could 
only  purify  its  past  by  a  noble  death,  and  leave,  in  so 
dying,  its  country  free.  One  thing  remained  un- 
changed— the  basis  of  the  two  dramas.  In  both 
the  battle  between  good  and  evil  is  set  in  array; 
in  both  the  good  triumphs ;  in  both  it  is  the  sover- 
eignty of  God's  righteousness  which  helps  the  weak- 
ness of  Man. 

We  understand  well  why  Milton  chose  this  subject 
in  his  later  years.  He  could,  without  much  danger 
or  offence,  express  in  it,  as  in  an  allegory,  the 
personal  and  political  position,  the  retrospect  and 
the  hopes,  of  himself  and  his  party.  Like  Samson, 
both  he  and  Puritanism  had  been  dedicated  to  God 
and  to  a  pure  and  temperate  life,  and  both  had 
smitten  the  Philistines  with  mighty  blows.  Both  had 
been  deserted  by  the  army  and  England  at  the  time 
when  they  were  fighting  hardest,  as  Samson  had  been 
by  Israel,  265 — 275.  In  his  own  life  Milton  had 
11 


160  MILTON.  [chap. 

married  a  Philistine  woman,  and  had  suffered  indigni- 
ties; and  England  had  been  lured  away  from  her 
republican  and  Puritan  life  by  the  blandishments  and 
splendour  of  the  Dalila  of  the  Restoration.  Milton 
was  now  blind,  compassed  round  by  foes,  among 
strange  faces,  in  a  land  that  seemed  strange, — and 
so  was  the  captive  Puritanism  of  England.  The 
Philistines  heaped  indignities  on  him  and  those  he 
honoured.  See  the  possible  allusion  to  the  treatment 
of  Cromwell's  body,  368.  They  mocked  the  poet 
and  his  cause.  But  Milton  had  endless  faith  in 
that  final  victory  of  good  over  evil  which  is  the  burden 
of  all  his  great  poems;  and  the  close  of  Samson 
Agonistes  is  the  old  warrior's  prophecy  of  the 
triumph  of  his  cause.  Though  dying  he  cried  "  Be 
of  good  courage,"  and  Samson  goes  forth  to  death, 
declaring  that  God  will  vindicate  His  righteousness. 

It  is  owing  to  the  strong  personal  and  historical 
element  in  this  drama,  and  to  the  solemn  feeling  with 
which  we  cannot  but  listen  to  the  last  words  of  the 
greatest  Englishman  of  his  time,  speaking  almost 
alone  in  heroic  faith,  that  Samson  Agonistes  has 
deserved  to  gain,  even  more  than  by  its  poetic  excel- 
lence, the  reverence  and  sympathy  of  Englishmen. 

The  Drama. — 'f  Tragedy,"  Milton  writes,  trans- 
lating Aristotle,  "  is  of  power,  by  raising  pity,  and  fear, 
or  terror,  to  purge  the  mind  of  those  and  such  like 
passions  ;  that  is,  to  temper  and  reduce  them  to  just 
measure  with  a  kind  of  delight,  stirred  up  by  reading 
or  seeing  these  passions  well  imitated."  It  is  on  the 
ground  of  this  statement  that  the  Samson  Agonistes 
is  to  be  explained. 

Samson,  on  whom  our  eyes  are  to  be  fixed  through- 
out, is  introduced  at  once  in  Milton's  deliberate  and 
pictorial  manner — 

"  A  little  onward  lend  thy  guiding  hand 
To  these  dark  steps,  a  little  further  on." 

However  Milton  may  linger  in  the  action  of  any  of 
his    themes,    he    enters    at    the   beginning   into    the 


iv.]  SAMSON  AGONISTES.  161 

midst  of  his  subject.  The  whole  position  is  given 
in  the  first  twenty-two  lines  ;  and  our  pity  is  imme- 
diately stirred  for  Samson's  bodily  distress  and  for 
his  mind  that  had  "no  ease  from  restless  thoughts, 
like  hornets  armed."  The  Miltonic  manner  is  just  as 
marked  in  what  follows.  The  retrospection  of  Sam- 
son ;  the  way  in  which  he  reasons  over,  rather  than 
feels  over,  his  past ;  his  argument  with  himself  in  an 
inward  debate ;  the  justification  of  God  with  which 
the  argument  ends  ; — we  have  already  frequently  met 
in  the  characters  of  Paradise  Lost.  Out  of  the  reason- 
ing arises,  at  line  67,  an  outburst  of  pathetic  and 
sublime  woe  ;  worthy  of  a  hero,  worthy  of  Milton, 
whose  voice  we  hear  throughout  mingling  his  cries 
with  Samson's,  in  verse  mighty  as  the  man  and  his 
grief.  We  are  lifted  into  the  heart  of  pity ;  but  the 
repetition  of  the  same  thoughts  in  an  argumentative 
form,  at  line  90,  lowers,  in  Milton's  too  common  way, 
the  pitch  of  passion  and  pathos. 

The  Chorus  now  come  in,  treading  softly,  and  their 
first  words,  direct  and  simple  as  if  they  were  Greeks, 
deepen  pity,  and  add  to  it  still  more  by  the  contrast 
they  draw  between  Samson's  present  and  his  past. 
Through  their  song  and  the  conversation  which  follows, 
in  which  the  story  of  his  life  is  told,  Samson  is 
made  to  grow  up  before  us  as  the  Great  Wrestler 
with  the  Philistines,  the  irresistible  Agonist,  but 
with  this  image  in  sharp  contrast,  the  secret  misery 
of  the  man  is  revealed,  his  failure  in  his  divine 
work,  his  weakness  and  shame.  The  tale  of  Dalila 
serves  as  motive  for  her  after  introduction ;  and 
the  chorus,  dwelling  on  one  of  Milton's  favourite 
themes,  the  justification  of  God's  ways  to  men,  closes 
this  part  of  the  Drama.  In  it  Milton  has  made 
Samson's  figure  fill  the  canvas,  and  he  has  made 
our  pity  for  him  great.  But  he  has  also  so  wrought 
his  work — and  this  is  true  of  all  that  comes  after 
— as  to  expand  and  dignify  the  catastrophe.  We 
know  beforehand  the  end,  and  the  poet,  supposing  that 
we  know  it,  puts  in  numberless  touches  which  refer 


162  MILTON.  [chap. 

to  that  end,  and  which,  through  our  knowledge  of  it, 
thrill  us  with  pity  or  terror  ;  while  the  sense  we  have 
that  the  actors,  not  knowing  the  conclusion,  do  not 
understand  the  weight  of  their  own  sayings,  increases 
the  excitement  with  which  we  anticipate  the  closing 
terror. 

The  entrance  of  Manoa  is  used  for  the  same  pur- 
poses. His  sorrow  deepens  our  pity ;  his  dwelling 
on  his  son's  weakness,  not  able  now  "  To  save  himself 
against  a  coward  armed,"  makes  us  look  forward 
through  contrast  to  the  end.  As  the  talk  goes  on 
between  Manoa  and  his  son,  Samson  rises  out  of 
physical  into  religious  heroism.  He  defends,  even  to 
his  own  self-blame,  God's  justice,  against  Manoa ; 
even  his  self-contempt  is  magnificent,  nor  less  the 
verse  in  which  it  is  told.  Manoa  thinks  his  son  most 
shamed,  in  that  this  feast  to  Dagon  is  his  doing,  a 
feast  whereby  God  is  disglorified.  Samson  confesses 
that  this  is  his  chief  affliction,  the  anguish  of  his  soul ; 
but  now  the  contest  is  no  longer  between  him  and 
Dagon,  but  between  God  and  Dagon ;  and  he  cries 
out  that  God  will  not  delay  to  vindicate  his  deity. 
This  is  the  ground  of  the  old  heroism  of  Israel  and 
of  the  Puritans  ;  the  ground  of  all  Milton's  religious 
thought,  of  Comus,  and  Paradise  Lost,  and  Paradise 
Regained  ;  the  sublimest  of  all  motives,  immeasurable 
faith  in  the  victory  of  God. 

"  Dagon  shall  stoop,  and  shall  ere  long  receive 
Such  a  discomfit  as  shall  quite  despoil  him." 

We  hear,  as  it  were,  the  sound  of  the  great  cata- 
strophe in  the  air.  But  the  note  of  the  dialogue 
changes  now,  lest  we  should  lose  pity.  Manoa  will 
seek  ransom  for  his  son,  but  Samson  will  not  have 
it ;  his  punishment  is  deserved.  Nay,  God  will  par- 
don, answers  Manoa,  and  restore  thee  to  thy  home. 
His  pardon  I  implore,  cries  Samson,  but  as  for 
life,  to  what  end  should  I  seek  it  ?  pride  and  pleasure 
have  turned  me  out  ridiculous,  despoiled.  The 
chorus   say  that  he  was  temperate.      Temperate    at 


iv.]  SAMSON  AGONISTES.  163 

one  gate,  he  answers,  but  not  at  another.  Now 
"blind,  disheartened,  shamed,  dishonoured,  quelled," 
old  age  and  disease  will  craze  his  limbs.  Strength, 
he  is  told,  God's  gift,  is  still  with  him  ;  but  then 
the  presentiment  of  death  steals  over  him  j  he  feels 
his  genial  spirits  droop  ;  and  we  are  startled  by  hearing 
in  the  midst  of  Samson's  words  the  piteous  but  solemn 
cry  of  Milton  himself, 

"  Nature  within  me  seems 
In  all  her  functions  weary  of  herself; 
My  race  of  glory  run,  and  race  of  shame, 
And  I  shall  shortly  be  with  them  at  rest." 

These  are  the  motives  of  the  dialogue,  and  we  do  not 
see  at  first  how  fine  it  is ;  how  it  purifies  our  minds — 
first,  through  the  deepening  of  pity,  and  then  through 
awe,  when  beyond  Samson's  desire  of  death  and  his 
humiliation  we  discern  the  terror  of  his  triumph.  The 
choric  song  m  which  he  beseeches  now  for  the  repose 
of  death,  makes  us  glad  that  he  is  going  to  die,  and  our 
minds  are  further  purified  by  the  satisfaction  of  pity. 
The  chorus,  dwelling  on  the  misfortunes  and  changes 
of  human  life,  enlarges  the  same  feelings.  We  hear 
Milton's  voice  again  in  it,  concerning  himself  in  a 
beautiful  passage,  660-666 }  concerning  his  party, 
and  their  fall,  and  their  sorrows,  throughout  the  rest 
of  the  lines.  It  is  nobly,  but  austerely  written,  and 
the  verse  is  rude,  even  to  displeasure.  At  the  end, 
the  sudden  change  in  the  movement  of  the  rhythm, 
which  becomes  almost  gay,  when  the  chorus  paints 
vividly  Dalila's  approach,  contrasts  finely,  as  Dalila 
herself  does,  with  the  rude  verse  and  the  rude  suffer- 
ings which  have  been  described. 

Two  episodes,  if  I  may  use  the  term,  now  interrupt 
the  main  action,  the  episodes  of  Dalila  and  of  Harapha. 
Both  serve  to  heighten  the  image  and  character  of 
Samson,  and  to  intensify,  through  hatred  of  his  enemies, 
our  pity  and  the  terror  in  the  catastrophe.  In  the 
first  he  triumphs  over  the  glozing  lies  and  wiles  of 
Dalila.  He  is  no  longer  seen  as  weakened  by  passion 
and   its    slave.     In  the  second  he  triumphs  by  the 


164  MILTON.  [chap. 

moral  power  of  courage  and  faith  over  the  brute  force 
and  proud  tyranny  of  Harapha.  He  is  shown  as  the 
image  of  divine  strength  in  contrast  with  base  power. 
His  position  (in  idea)  is  the  same  as  Christ's  when 
the  Tempter  offers  him  the  tyranny. 

Dalila  is  drawn  with  laborious  judgment.  All  the 
effects  are  carefully  studied.  The  dialogue  is  not  so 
much  dialogue  as  a  violent  debate  between  two  ideas 
in  Milton's  mind.  She  is  Milton's  portrait  of  a  base 
and  hateful  woman,  treacherous,  lying,  having  the  lust 
and  the  beauty  of  the  flesh,  vilely  curious,  falsely  jealous, 
cunning,  a  hypocrite  in  love  and  in  patriotism  and  in 
religion,  deceiving  through  the  sorcery  of  beauty,  foul 
within,  a  manifest  serpent.  The  chorus,  rough  alike 
in  verse  and  expression,  is  Milton's  most  determined, 
most  ferocious  assault  on  evil  womanhood. 

The  episode  of  Harapha  follows.  Harapha  is 
the  semblance  of  mindless  force  and  its  vain  boast- 
fulness  ;  the  tongue -doughty  giant ;  the  Moloch  of 
Paradise  Lost  in  another  form.  The  chorus  work 
out  this  idea  more  fully.  They  praise  God  because 
he  puts  invincible  might  into  men, 

"  To  quell  the  mighty  of  the  earth,  the  oppressor, 
The  brute  and  boisterous  force  of  violent  men, 
Hardy  and  industrious  to  support 
Tyrannic  power,  but  raging  to  pursue 
The  righteous,  and  all  such  as  honour  truth ! " 

The  sole  importance  of  the  scene  is  that  it  exalts 
Samson  in  our  eyes  and  gives  occasion  to  a  chorus 
which  has  all  the  grandeur,  the  solemnity,  and  the 
simple  motives  of  a  Psalm  of  David's.  The  pathos 
of  the  personal  touch  at  the  end  is  very  beautiful. 

"  But  sight  bereaved 
May  chance  to  number  thee  with  those 
Whom  patience  finally  must  crown." 

In  the  next  scene,  when  the  "  officer "  demands 
Samson's  presence  at  the  games,  and  the  demand  is 
refused,  the  interest  of  the  audience,  because  they 
know  the  end,  is  intended  to  be  further  stimulated  by 


iv.]  SAMSON  AGONISTES.  165 

the  delay.  This  is  another  instance  of  Milton's  love  of 
lingering  for  the  sake  of  increasing  expectation.  It  is 
also  fitting  that  Samson,  lest  we  lose  honour  for  him, 
should  at  first  refuse.  But  when  Samson's  indignation 
is  at  the  last  point,  and  he  is  to  be  dragged  with 
violence  to  the  games,  and  so  degraded  by  this  that 
he  would  lose  the  heroic  position  in  our  eyes ;  the 
poet's  art  makes  a  presage  come  to  him,  a  rousing 
motion  of  some  great  act  which  will  outdo  all  others 
in  his  life,  and  in  the  light  of  this  prophetic  hope 
he  goes  forth  quiet,  resolved,  and  high,  uplifted 
to  the  full  image  of  tragic  heroism.  The  short  choric 
song  deepens  this  impression  by  recalling  Samson's 
past  glory  and  dwelling  on  his  strength  as  the  gift  of 
God. 

At  his  departure  Manoa  again  appears,  and  his 
hopes  of  ransoming  Samson  are  a  new  call  on  our 
pity,  while  his  sketch  of  the  Philistine  court  is  perhaps 
Milton's  satire  on.  the  treatment  of  the  Puritans  by  the 
Court.  Then  comes  in  the  element  of  the  terror  of 
the  catastrophe  to  which  we  have  so  long  looked 
forward.  The  great  shout  which  tears  the  sky,  heard 
from  far,  when  the  people  see  their  foe,  serves  to  exalt 
still  higher  our  image  of  Samson,  and  to  excite  us  with 
the  imagination  of  the  coming  horror  ;  and  the  picture 
Manoa  draws  of  his  son  at  home  resting  at  last  in 
peace,  tended  by  his  father,  is  made,  by  contrast,  to 
increase  our  apprehension.  For  in  the  very  midst  of 
this  homely  picture  of  quiet  life — 

"  O,  what  noise  ! 
Mercy  of  Heaven  !  what  hideous  noise  was  that  ? 
Horribly  loud,  unlike  the  former  shout. 
Chor.   Noise  call  you  it,  or  universal  groan, 

As  if  the  whole  inhabitation  perished  ? 

Blood,  death,  and  deathful  deeds,  are  in  that  noise, 

Ruin,  destruction  at  the  utmost  point." 

The  action  is  now  hurried,  being  at  the  very  point  of 
excitement.  The  hopes  and  fears,  the  wild  patriotism 
of  Manoa  and  his  friends,  the  father  and  the  Israelite 
commingling  in  grief  and  exultation  ;  the  rushing  in  of 


166  MILTON.  [chap. 

the  messenger ;  the  swift  statement  of  the  death ;  the 
iron  joy  of  the  father,  his  great  cry — "  What  glorious 
hand  gave  Samson  his  death-wound  ?  " — all,  all  is 
admirable.  Nor  does  the  almost  epic  narration  of 
the  messenger,  which  after  all  the  storm  brings  us  into 
quiet — quiet  fitted  for  the  solemn  telling  of  a  great 
deed — lower,  but  dignify  the  close.  The  Chorus  and 
Semi-chorus  sing  the  praise  of  the  dearly-bought 
revenge.  There  is  a  wild  clashing,  like  that  of  cymbals, 
in  their  words,  but  the  song  is  not  quite  on  a  level 
with  Milton's  power.  The  true  close  is  the  speech  of 
Manoa,  a  pure  and  noble  and  lovely  piece  of  work ; 
fixing  our  minds  on  the  heroic  life  and  death  ;  on 
the  revenge  which  has  purified  Samson's  weakness; 
on  the  honour  and  freedom  left  to  Israel ;  on  God 
with  his  son  in  death — 

"  Nothing  is  here  for  tears,  nothing  to  wail 
Or  knock  the  breast ;  no  weakness,  no  contempt, 
Dispraise  or  blame  ;  nothing  but  well  and  fair, 
And  what  may  quiet  us  in  a  death  so  noble." 

And  the  final  picture  of  his  grave  leads  us,  after  all 
this  pity  and  terror,  into  a  world  of  still  and  solemn 
poetry.  The  chorus  says  the  last  word.  It  is  Milton's 
last  word  on  Samson  and  his  cause,  on  himself 
and  Puritanism.  With  "  peace  and  consolation  "  God 
had  dismissed  his  servant  from  the  storms  of  life, 
with  "  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent." 

But  Samson  Agonistes  has  more  than  a  personal  or  a 
party  interest.  Its  literary  position  is  unique.  Written 
in  blank  verse,  in  the  old  English  spirit,  in  the  old 
classic  manner,  it  is  a  stranger  among  the  dramas  of 
the  Restoration,  which  were  written  in  rhyme,  in  the 
new  French  spirit,  in  a  form  which  wore  the  garments 
but  had  not  the  heart  of  the  classic  plays.  On  the 
other  hand,  written  in  1674,  it  is  an  unexpected  resur- 
rection of  that  great  Elizabethan  Drama  which  began 
its  mighty  youth  in  Tamburlaine  and  had  died  before 
the  Restoration.  It  is  divided  from  both  Dramas  by 
its  religion,  its  ideal  morality,  and  its  republicanism — 


iv.]  SAMSON  AGONISTES.  167 

in  one  word,  by  its  Puritanism.  But  by  race  and 
descent,  by  dramatic  seriousness  and  literary  manner, 
by  the  imaginative  force  with  which  it  is  conceived, 
by  the  peculiarity  of  the  classical  colouring  and  the 
metrical  forms,  by  the  English  and  the  construction 
of  the  English,  by  its  allegorical  turn,  by  the  spirit 
which  fills  its  poetry,  and  above  all,  by  its  note  of 
passion,  however  grave  that  passion  be,  Samson  Ago- 
nistes  is  the  last  expression,  born  out  of  due  time,  of 
the  Elizabethan  Tragedy.  In  its  relation,  alike  to  the 
Drama  that  preceded  and  surrounded  it,  it  resembles 
one  of  those  fortress-rocks  which,  the  expiring  effort  of 
the  energy  of  the  Alpine  chain,  stands  apart  in  the 
plain  of  Lombardy,  and  frowns  upon  a  world  in  which 
it  is  a  stranger.  Like  it,  too,  Milton  and  his  work 
remain  apart  in  lonely  grandeur.  In  one  aspect,  he 
had  no  predecessor  and  no  follower.  And  we,  who 
attempt,  at  so  vast  a  distance,  to  look  up  to  the  height 
on  which  he  sits  with  Homer  and  Dante,  feel  we  may 
paint  the  life,  but  hardly  dare  to  analyse  the  work, 
of  the  great  Singer  and  Maker  whose  name  shines 
only  less  brightly  than  Shakspere's  on  the  long  and 
splendid  roll  of  the  poets  of  England. 


MILTON  !   THOU  SHOULDST   EE   LIVING  AT  THIS   HOUR  ; 

ENGLAND   HATH   NEED   OF   THEE  '.   SHE   IS   A  FEN 

OF  STAGNANT  WATERS  !    ALTAR,    SWORD,    AND    PEN, 

FIRESIDE,    THE   HEROIC  WEALTH    OF   HALL  AND   BOWER, 

HAVE   FORFEITED   THEIR   ANCIENT   ENGLISH   DOWER 

OF  INWARD    HAPPINESS.      WE  ARE   SELFISH    MEN  : 

OH  !   RAISE   US    UP,    RETURN    TO    US   AGAIN  ; 

AND   GIVE    US    MANNERS,    FREEDOM,    VIRTUE,    POWER. 

THY   SOUL   WAS    LIKE   A  STAR   AND   DWELT   APART  : 

THOU   HADST   A   VOICE   WHOSE   SOUND   WAS    LIKE  THE   SEA, 

PURE   AS   THE  NAKED   HEAVENS,    MAJESTIC,    FREE, 

SO   DIDST  THOU   TRAVEL   ON    LIFE'S    COMMON   WAY 

IN   CHEERFUL   GODLINESS  ;   AND   YET   THY    HEART 

THE    LOWLIEST   DUTIES   ON    HERSELF   DID    LAY. 


CHRONOLOGICAL     TABLE. 


1608.  Milton  born,  Dec.  9. 
1620.   To  St.  Paul's  School. 

1625.  To  Cambridge. 
James  I.  died. 

1626.  On  a  Fair  Infant. 

1628.  Vacation  Exercise. 

1629.  B.A.   Nativity  Ode. 

1630.  The  Circumcision  ;  The 

Passion ;  On  Time ; 
At  a  Solemn  Music  ; 
Epitaph  on  Shakspere. 

1 63 1.  Ep.  on  Hobson  and  on 

MSS.  of  Winchester  ; 
May  Morning. 

1632.  M.A.   Cambridge,  Son- 

net I.  ;  Retires  to 
Horton,  Sonnet  II. 

1633.  Arcades ;  V Allegro;  11 

Penseroso  ? 

1634.  Comus  acted. 

1635.  M.A.  Oxford. 

1637.  Lycidas. 

1638.  Continental      Journey  ; 

Italian  Sonnets. 

1639.  Epitaphium  Damonis. 

1640.  Long  Parliament. 

1 64 1.  Of      Reformation      in 

England :  Prelatical 
Episcopacy ;  Reason 
of  Church  Govern- 
ment ;  A  ni?nadver- 
sions;  Grand  Remon- 
strance. 

1642.  Apology  for    Smeclym- 

nuus ;  Civil  War  ; 
Battle  of  Edgehill. 

1643.  Marries  Mary  Powell  ; 

Battles  of  Chalgrove 
and  Newbury;  Deaths 
of  Hampden  and  Pym. 

1644.  Marston  Moor  ;    Edu- 

cation Tract ;   Areo- 
pagitica;  Two  Divorce 
Tracts. 

1645.  Last       Two       Divorce 

Tracts ;      Battle     of 
Naseby. 

1646.  Publication  of  Poems. 
1648.  Second      Civil      War ; 

Ps.  LXXX.  —  VII. 


1649. 


1651. 
1653. 


1654. 

1655. 
1656. 

1657. 
1658. 


1659. 


1660. 


1664. 

1667. 
1669. 
1671. 

1672. 
1673. 


1674. 


Charles  I.  executed  ; 
Tenure  of  Kings  and 
Magistrates;  On  Or- 
mondes Peace  ;  Eikono- 
clastes ;  Latin  Secre- 
tary. 

Defensio  pro  poptdo 
Anglicano  ;  Battle  of 
Worcester. 

Long  Parliament  dis- 
solved; Ps.  I.  —  VIII. ; 
Death  of  Milton's 
first  wife  ;  Protecto- 
rate. 

Defensio  secunda. 

Pro  se  Defensio. 

Marries  Catherine 

Woodcock. 

Cromwell  installed  as 
Protector. 

Death  of  Milton's  second 
Wife ;  Raleigh's 

Cabinet  Council  ; 

Death  of  Cromwell. 

Civil  Potver  in  Eccles. 
Causes  ;  Way  to  Re- 
move Hirelings ;  De- 
claration of  Free 
Commonwealth ;  R. 
Cromwell  resigns. 

Ready  and  Easy  Way  to 
Establish  Free  Com- 
monwealth :  The 

Restoration. 

Milton  marries  Eliz. 
Minshull. 

Paradise  lost. 

History  of  England. 

Paradise  Regained ; 
Samson  Agonistes. 

Artis  logica. 

Of  7  rue  Religion ; 
Heresy  and  Schism  ; 
Early  Poems  repub- 
lished. 

Paradise  Lost,  2nd 
Edition  ;  Epist.  Fam- 
iliares  ;  Academic  Ex- 
ercises ;  I  >eath,  Nov. 
8  ;  Burial,  Nov.  12. 


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